Healthy soil may play a huge role in mitigating global warming and helping us adapt to it. From: www.huffingtonpost.com
GR: Healthy soil contains a rich array of microorganisms that are adapted to the site and to the plants and animals growing on the soil. Healthy soil blocks weed invasions, reduces flooding by absorbing precipitation, and produces the most plant growth. Centuries of farming and livestock grazing have destroyed most soils. Cows compact the soil, break up the essential surface and subsurface biological crusts. Flooding increases and carries with it the finest soil, the topsoil. Researchers have learned that it takes decades and even a century for damaged soils to recover. I know of no places that gauge their rest-rotation cycles in decades. However, that is what is required to restore the soil. We must begin now restoring our soils. It’s too late to block climate change, but healthy soil is essential if we hope one day to have healthy ecosystems again.
