Soil awareness

A fistful of soil Source: LBEG

“In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.”
(Bada Dioum, Senegalese environment protection expert on the occasion of the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, 1992)

Soils provide the habitat for flora and fauna, they act as filter for our drinking water, provide foods and sustain forests. They supply us with bioenergy commodities and are an important archive of the natural and cultural history, in short:

Soils are the basis of our life.

Sand pictures - painted by children during open day at Geozentrum Hannover Source: E. Gehrt

Soils are however exposed to a variety of threats, for instance water and wind erosion, deleterious compaction, contamination, acidification, salinisation and soil sealing when used for human settlement and transport. This is why we need to care for our soils. As we protect in the first place what we know and as we only know what we have learnt, education on soil is necessary in school and in public: It is an indispensable prerequisite to conserve the soil. Hence, soil scientists are required to work together closely with teachers and educationists.

(The majority of the material about soil on this website is provided in German only.)