Fundamental bases of biological soil resilience

土壤是我们文明的基础，因为我们依赖土壤提供各种商品和服务，如粮食生产、水储存和净化、养分循环、支持生物多样性以及我们赖以生存的平台。然而，他们经常受到压力和压力，这可能会损害他们履行这些功能的能力。由于对土壤的需求不断增加，加上气候变化，这种压力正在增加。健康土壤可以定义为那些能够提供一系列所需功能、承受施加于其上的压力并从这些挑战中恢复过来的土壤——换句话说，土壤需要具有弹性。我们对究竟是什么使土壤更具或更少的弹性，以及控制这种行为的机制知之甚少。我们认为这可能与它们的固有属性（即它们的组成）和外部因素（如它们在景观中的位置和管理方式）的组合有关。我们建议确定哪些是与土壤恢复力有关的关键特性。我们的方法是考虑与土壤生物活性相关的特定土壤功能，这表明土壤具有许多更一般的功能。我们建议从英格兰各地广泛采集土壤样本，以便我们在基本特性和环境方面有很大的范围，并在实验室中使用一种测量干燥和湿润循环引起的扰动后生物活性的技术来确定它们的弹性。了解了土壤的性质和相关的弹性，我们就可以探索两者之间的关系。我们认为恢复力不太可能是由于一种特定的土壤特征，而是多种因素的结合。为了阐明这些关系，我们将开发和应用适合于这些任务的数学和统计方法的组合。这些结果将让我们确定是什么支撑了土壤的弹性，以及我们可以在多大程度上赋予土壤弹性，例如通过我们如何管理它们。我们还将利用这些数据为英格兰制作土壤恢复力的原型图，这将提供信息，以确定哪些土壤或多或少坚固，因此可能需要特殊方法来确保维持其健康。该提案通过发展对土壤如何管理以抵抗环境变化的方式的理解，解决了与环境变化共存的倡议。

Soils underpin our civilisation, since we rely on them to provide a wide range of goods and services such as food production, water storage and purification, nutrient cycling, support for biodiversity and a platform on which we reside. However, they are constantly subjected to stresses and pressures which may compromise their ability to deliver these functions. Such pressures are increasing as a result of the accelerating demands placed on soils, compounded by climate change. Healthy soils can be defined as those that are able to deliver the range of desired functions, withstand such pressures applied to them, and recover from such challenges - in other words, soils need to be resilient. We know little of what actually makes soils more or less resilient, and what the mechanisms are which govern such behaviour. We think it may be related to a combination of their inherent properties (i.e. what they comprise), and external factors (such as their position in the landscape and the way they have been managed). We propose to identify which are the key properties of soils that relate to their resilience. Our approach will be to consider a particular soil function related to the biological activity of soils, which is indicative of many of the more general functions that soils carry out. We propose to take soil samples from a wide spread across England so that we have a big range in basic properties and circumstances, and determine their resilience in the laboratory using a technique which measures biological activity following perturbation arising from drying and wetting cycles. Knowing both the soil properties and the associated resilience, we can then explore the relationships between the two. We think that it is unlikely that resilience is due to one particular soil characteristic, but a combination of factors. In order to elucidate such relationships we will develop and apply a combination of mathematical and statistical approaches which are suited to such tasks. The results will let us then establish both what it is that underpins soil resilience, and also the extent to which we may be able to impart resilience onto soils, for example by how we manage them. We will also use the data to produce a prototype map of soil resilience for England, which will be informative in terms of identifying which soils are more or less robust and therefore may need particular approaches to ensure the maintenance of their health. This proposal addresses the Living with Environmental Change initiative by developing understanding of the ways in which soils may be managed to resist environmental change.