Talk:Soil retrogression and degradation

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 August 2020 and 12 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lhami27.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:44, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Climax

The following insight may apply to the article:

"Before I started up the Pygmy forest staircase, I believed any natural ecosystem improves over time, that roots would hold the essential soil minerals and add topsoil, increase in stability and maybe increase diversity. Or if the ecosystem should happen not to improve, at least it would stay constant indefinitely. By the time we headed back to Berkeley, the pillars of my ecological understanding had been shaken. In the younger first and second terraces away from the ocean, the redwood and Douglas fir forest loomed up around us. Terrace three was a transition zone that included Jeffrey pine, and terraces four and five (the older) were pygmy forest, severely stunted in appearance."

"Over the next several weeks, letters were exchanged, and finally, about four months after the field trip, a letter came from Hans saying he was unaware of such a concept as steadily improving ecosystems. He said such a "sunshiney belief rests on a neglect to appreciate the soil as a dynamic — either improving or degrading — vital component of land ecosystems." There was little comfort in the fact that I had had it half right."

"Fundamentalism sometimes dies hard. Staring into a soil pit dug into the fourth terrace, I could sympathize with the churchmen who refused to look through Galileo's telescope. Even there, with the evidence before me, I protested, saying that good farming can improve the soil. "Yes," Hans said, but "the extent depends on what kind of a soil, virgin or depleted, the farmer begins with." He thought it would be difficult to improve a good virgin Iowa prairie soil by management techniques, except perhaps by applying nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium."

"This was the beginning of an important lesson for me. Since then I have burdened myself and my students with the question: Why should a look to nature, as we work out our relationship to the earth, provide us with easy absolutes?"

"As you can see, this is a story that lends itself neither to sound bites nor bumper stickers. It is not a story to discredit organic gardening, but it is a story that illustrates, for all practical purposes, that soil is as much of a non-renewable resource as oil."

from: Fertility and the Age of Soils by Wes Jackson. The Land Institute

Based on the above, one would have to conclude that soil climax is not truly sustainable under natural conditions. Climax in soils is still a workable concept in the shorter timescales involving 100's and 1000's of years relevant to issues of land use ethics, stewardship and sustainability. The concept of climax often doesn't hold for geologic timescales of 10,000s and 100,000s of years. Perhaps there is a way to improve the article in this regard without diluting the central message.

Paleorthid 05:55, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The above issue is also touched on in the climax community article

Paleorthid 16:57, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Article name

I freely admit to knowing little about the topic of this article. But shouldn't it in fact be named Soil retrogression and degradation? Silverhelm 00:46, 28 September 2005 (UTC).

Shouldn't the article on Land degradation be integrated into this article (and a redirect from Land degradation to this article)? According to google land degradation is more common than soil degradation though.Brz7 00:03, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Request citations

Wikipedia appears to be the sole primary source of the term soil(s) retrogression. That is bad but worse, in my opinion, is that, in the rare cases that retrogression is related to soil in source literature, it is seemingly never applied to material loss (erosion), as presented in the article, rather it has to to with a slowing relative to one or more internal soil forming factors. Another discrepancy is that soil retrogression, in the literature, is not restricted to human induced changes. -- Paleorthid 21:36, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

The use of the term soil degradation in the article refers specifically to evolution of soils and to the change from primitive vegetation to secondary vegetation. This does not appear to be a common way to present this term. Additionally, the terms soil evolution and primitive vegetation do not appear to be in common usage. Is there a reference available to support these three terms? -- Paleorthid 21:36, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

If references demonstrating common usage of these terms are not forthcoming, I advocate a copyedit of the content and moving/distributing the content to one or more different titles that employ teminology in common use as it relates to soil (not sure where this leads us). There is good content in this article, and I don't want to see it lost just because the originator(s) neglected to use common terminology to organize the content. -- Paleorthid 21:36, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I did not use "common terminology" because I very little know it. I have been working in soil science for quite a while, but essentially in french. Anthere 21:31, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

oh, by the way. The main source I could provide is a little book which we use around here and which is somehow the "bible" of soil scientists in France. The author is actually from the school I graduated. The full reference is escaping me and I am not at home. I'll dig it. When I wrote these articles, the requirement of citing sources did not exactly existed. It was 2-3 years after I quit a job basically dealing with degraded soils. It was quite a while ago now. Anthere

Very much looking forward to it. -- Paleorthid 21:38, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I just had a look on google (eh :-)) since I remembered that it was a Masson edition just as Erhart one and the title simply "pédologie". So, it is

Duchaufour P. (1991) - Pédologie. Masson.

though... it seems MUCH to recent a book...

It must rather be Précis de pédologie in 1965. Well, I'll check. ant

Erhart reference

I am trying to track down the correct title and publication date for the main reference for this article: L. Erhart (1956). Theory of Biorhexistasy. -- Paleorthid

I have removed the reference, since I have no confidence I am referring to it'ds title accurately. I have started a new article relying the glossary entry discussed below. -- Paleorthid 21:55, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

This source used 1968 (see section "The rivers are becoming muddy"), referred to the author as _H_ Erhart:

Erhart, H. 1968. La genèse des sols entant que phénomène géologique. Masson, Paris, France. [1].

Another source referred vaguely to L. Erhart and 1950.

Instead of either of the above, I am using thinking it should be 1956 and _L_ Erhart based on this French glossary: http://www.inra.fr/afes/ouvragedunod/glossairefinal.htm which states:

Biorhéxistasie (théorie de la ), (biorhexistasy) Proposée par L. Erhart en 1956, elle explique les relations existantes entre la formation des sols sur les continents et la nature des dépôts marins synchrones. Elle repose sur le concept d’une évolution discontinue de notre planète, caractérisée par une alternance de phases de biostasie et de rhéxistasie. Durant les phases de biostasie, des précipitations abondantes et régulières induisent une forte pédogenèse caractérisée par une forte altération du matériau parental et une lixiviation intense des alcalins et des alcalino-terreux ce qui se traduit par la formation d’argiles, d’oxydes de fer et d’aluminium et la concentrations de minéraux résiduels dans le sol. Un tel climat favorise aussi la végétation qui protége les sols de l’érosion. Les eaux de percolation aboutissent dans les lacs et en mer où le calcium qu’elles ont lixivié dans les sols précipite sous forme de calcaire. Au cours des phases de rhéxistasie, le climat devient plus sec, entraînant une dégradation de la végétation, celle-ci associée à des précipitations irrégulières induit une forte érosion des sols d’où une sédimentation détritique.

Loosely translated and copyedited by yours truly as follows:

Theory of Biorhexistasy Proposed by L. Erhart in 1956, it explains the relationships involved in the formation of soils on the continents and, at the same time, the nature of marine deposits. It relies on the concept of discontinuous evolution of our planet, characterized by the alternating of two phases: biostasis and rhexistasis. During biostasis, abundant and regular precipitation induces strong pedogenesis characterized by a strong alteration of parent material and intense (lixiviation=eluviation?) of (des alcalins et des alcalino-terreux=cations?) which contribute to the formation of argillic horizons, iron and aluminum oxides et la concentrations de minéraux résiduels dans le sol. This climatic condition also favors a vegetative cover which protects the soil from erosion. Rain waters aboutissent dans les lacs et en mer où le calcium qu’elles ont lixivié dans les sols précipite sous forme de calcaire.(see note) During rhexistasy, the climate changes to a drier variant, resulting in the loss of vegetation, and the irregular precipitation associated with this phase causes strong soil erosian by water and sedimentation.

(note: Erhart believed that limestone forming sediments were deposited during biostasis and sandstone forming sediments were deposited during rhexistasy.)

A source supporting 1956, but not the _L_:

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/esanac/DOUG1.PDF which has in the bibliograpy: Erhart, H. 1956 Le genese des sols, en tant que phënomene gëologique. Esquisse d'une thëorie gëologique et gëochimique. Biostasie et rhexistasie. Paris: Masson.

Correct spelling is below

Original edition in 1951. 1956 was a re-editing.

ERHART H, 1951. La genèse des sols en tant que phénomène géologique. Esquisse d’une théorie géologique et géochimique. Biostasie et rhéxistasie. Masson, Paris, 90 p, autres éditions en 1956 , 1967 (177 p.).

Anthere

Moving closer to article merge

With no response to my previously stated concerns, and with the new article on biorhexistasy now stable, I am much closer to article merger with land degradation. -- Paleorthid 18:53, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

usually, the bigger article, in particular if older, is the one for which history is kept. Not the most recent one. I think that given that I was originally the main author of this one, it would be quite defeating the respect of moral authorship to merge it into another one and make my contribution entirely disappear. Note that it is possible to try to keep the two histories. I see not why you wish to make this history disappear. Are you an admin ? Anthere

removed tags for mergeto and fact

Don't panic. I can't express how pleased to see a response to my concerns. I was losing hope.

You indicate above that the statements in the introduction currently tagged {{fact}} are supported by Précis de pédologie by Philippe Duchaufour. This indicates Précis... was published in 1960. I have added in the ref and removed the tags.

To respond, the circumstances here did not seem usual to me. Consider that we American soil scientists are not exposed to the concept of soils retrogression. Without a verifiable source, this article had fatal deficiencies that land degradation did not. I proposed merging soils retrogression and degradation as a constructive (supportive, respectful) alternative to nominating it for deletion as a violation of WP:OR. I tagged it {{mergeto}} only after the {{fact}} tag had gotten stale.

The history (and availability) of our individual edit contributions would not disappear in a merger - a redirect should preserve the article history. Am I missing anything? -- Paleorthid 03:02, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I left off that if article cut&paste procedures would result in the loss of important edit history, the history can also can be moved, and should be moved for copyright reasons. I had forgotten about this aspect, thanks for needling me into recall. I don't really understand how this works and not clear if it would work for (or is intended to apply to) moving sections. It takes an admin, which I am not. If I ever cut&paste to move significant content between articles, I'll be sure to get an admin's advice before attempting it. -- Paleorthid 13:40, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

in the French school of pedology

Adding the above qualifier to the introductory sentence reconciles the discepancies in term use presented earlier. The meaning of soils retrogression and soil degradation changes depending on the national school of pedology. -- Paleorthid 14:07, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Expert needed

As far as I know, no editor of this article has actually read the cited reference. Someone, in the Soil WikiProject perhaps, needs to review the citation against the article. See article assessment at Wikipedia:WikiProject Soil/Worklist -- Paleorthid 18:43, 18 November 2006 (UTC)