Soil Ecology: Key to Climate Solution and Sustainability
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Soils of the Earth constitute the largest and undoubtedly, the most wonderful terrestrial ecosystem. This ecosystem is also a mysterious in the sense that it is one of the least understood and perhaps the most neglected one. Its mysteries are yet to be revealed so that we could understand it in its entire depth and articulate it’s functioning into what could be a boon for nurturing our hopes, happiness and sustainability. Much of our visible world-the above- soil world-is attributable to the soil . Soil is not just the “uppermost mantle of the lithosphere”. It is more than that. It is the sort of habitat of the numerous organisms belonging to all the kingdoms of living beings. And thus, soil make a wonderful and mysterious world of their own -a non-visible or less visible world which is so rich in its living varieties reverberating with fullness of life. What is there in the above-soil world prevails in the world of the soil. What is the first and the foremost truth about our living planet is this that most of the life – gauged in numbers, varieties (diversity), as well as in biomass-inhabits soil ecosystem rather than the above-soil environment. The relationship, nevertheless, is reciprocal, mutual, complimentary, and synergistic.