Fundamental basis of soil biological resilience

土壤支撑着我们的文明，因为我们依赖土壤提供广泛的商品和服务，如粮食生产、水储存和净化、养分循环、对生物多样性的支持以及我们居住的平台。然而，他们经常受到压力和压力的影响，这可能会损害他们履行这些职能的能力。由于对土壤的需求不断增加，再加上气候变化，这种压力正在增加。健康的土壤可以被定义为能够提供所需功能的土壤，能够承受施加在土壤上的压力，并能从这些挑战中恢复过来--换句话说，土壤需要具有弹性。我们对究竟是什么使土壤变得更有弹性，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内在属性(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。我们建议确定与其弹性相关的土壤的关键属性。我们的方法将是考虑与土壤的生物活性有关的特定土壤功能，这表明土壤执行的许多更一般的功能。我们建议从英格兰各地广泛采集土壤样本，以便我们在基本性质和环境方面有很大的范围，并在实验室使用一种测量干燥和潮湿循环引起的扰动后的生物活动的技术来确定它们的弹性。知道了土壤属性和相关的弹性后，我们就可以探索两者之间的关系。我们认为，弹性不太可能是由于一种特定的土壤特性，而是多种因素的组合。为了阐明这种关系，我们将开发和应用一种适用于这类任务的数学和统计方法的组合。这些结果将使我们能够确定土壤弹性的基础是什么，以及我们可能在多大程度上赋予土壤弹性，例如通过我们如何管理土壤。我们还将使用这些数据来制作英格兰土壤弹性的原型地图，这将有助于识别哪些土壤更健壮，因此可能需要特定的方法来确保其健康。这项提案旨在解决与环境变化共存的倡议，通过发展对土壤管理方式的理解来抵御环境变化。

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.