Biogeochemical Mapping: A New Tool to Assess the Soil Quality and Health

Abstract

Soil health is a recently established soil-biogeochemistry related concept. It has been defined as “the continued capacity of the soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals and humans”. As such, it can be considered as an approach to the consideration of soil as a living being. The parameters used to assess soil health are multiple, some of which are easy and cheap to measure, while others prove to be economically costly and time-consuming, as it is the case with the genetic identification and characterization of the microbiological communities, living in a certain soil, which represent the soil biodiversity and vitality. Other parameters can be considered as approximations to this concept. In this introduction to the concept, we consider to put forward three case studies. Two of them correspond to real “case studies”, carried out in heavily polluted soils in relation with mining activity. As for the third study case, it corresponds to a recently funded project aimed to get a global view of the soil health relevant to the entirety of the South-Central Spain region.