The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, such as sustainable food production, ensuring healthy lives and reducing environmental risks, ensuring water availability and improving carbon sequestration in soil, can cause problems related to soil erosion and pollution in soil. Experts pay particular attention to the importance of effective soil protection strategies, new computational technologies, models and in situ measurements, the impact of external factors, such as human activities, on soil microorganisms and water conditions, environmental pollution with microplastics, development of green soil reclamation technologies and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (Rodrigo-Comino, et al., 2020).
When it comes to soil pollution, heavy metals represent broad chapter.
Heavy metals within soil may come from natural or anthropogenic sources (such as industry, use of fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture, burning of fossil fuels. (Kabata-Pendias, 2015) (Liu, et al., 2024). Heavy metals do not decompose and remain in the soil for a long time, posing a threat to the environment. (Yan, et al., 2020) Metals are toxic to most microorganisms and fauna when present in high concentrations. Through the process of uptake by plants, they become potentially harmful to human health.
The content of heavy metals in plants depends on their amount in the form available in the soil solution. The percentage of the total form of heavy metals that can be converted into an available form depends on the soil pH and the quantity and quality of heavy metal bonds in the soil, which is the responsibility of the sorption complex. (Kabata-Pendias, 2011)
Apart from heavy metals content, there are also other factors describing the condition of the soil. It is important to measure its aggregation and infiltration, as well as the biomass and activity of microorganisms, mobile nutrients and total organic carbon. (Lehmann, et al., 2020)
REFERENCES:
Kabata-Pendias, A. a. S. B., 2015. Trace elements in abiotic and biotic.. s.l.:CRC press.
Lehmann, J., Brossio, D., Kogel-Knabner, I. & Rillig, M., 2020. The concept and future prospects of soil health. Nat Rev Earth Environ., Volume 1(10), pp. 544-553.
Liu, J., Gong, C., Wang, S. & Wang, L., 2024. Spatial differentiation of soil nutrients and their ecological chemometrics based on geographic detector in National Agricultural Park of Tangchang, Southwest China. PLoS ONE, Volume 1(19).
Rodrigo-Comino, J. et al., 2020. Soil science challenges in a New Era: A transdisciplinary overview of relevant topics.. Air, Soil and Water Research, Volume 13, pp. 1-17.
Yan, A. et al., 2020. Phytoremediation: A promising approach for revegetation of heavy metal-polluted land.. Frontiers in Plant Science, Volume 11.