D.G.
Rossiter
genoform, only the more recent land use history would be needed,
together with models that relate the land management to phenoforms.
The study of Azzari et al. (2019) (see above) is an example, as it covered
ten years and in each year predicted the tillage intensity. This would
have to be related to a model of changes in soil function, in order to map
soil phenoforms. These would have substantial differences in soil
structure, subsoil compaction, and perhaps topsoil thickness and organic
matter content, leading to functional differences. Such examples are
obviously context-specific.
8. The relation with soil security
The five soil security dimensions (McBratney et al., 2014) are the “5
Cs”: (1) soil capability (stable properties, natural capital), (2) soil
condition (e.g., conservation, regeneration, degradation and pollution),
(3) soil capital (production, natural, conservation), and (4) soil con­
nectivity to society (soil awareness, education) and (5) soil codifica­
tion (soil governance, policy, regulation, law). When functions have
been modified enough to result in new soil phenoforms, obviously this
affects their capability and condition. “Condition” in this sense is close to
the soil phenoform concept.
The concept of soil condition is also related to the “soil health”
concept (Lehmann et al., 2020), which has been criticized as being not
rigorously defined (e.g., Baveye, 2021; Powlson, 2021). However, the
recognition of changing condition has been incorporated into the USA’s
Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) programme both as
“soil health” NRCS Soils and “dynamic soil properties” NRCS Soils, the
latter following the position paper of Tugel et al. (2005) as incorporated
in to the Soil Survey Manual (Wills et al., 2017). These initiatives are
aimed at monitoring change in recognized map units, and not at defining
soil phenoforms that are stable in the medium term.
Bouma (2020b) explains how the soil phenoform concept can be
linked to soil condition for the production function, using the actual
yield Ya relative to the potential water-limited yield Yw:
A soil health index for a given soil is obtained by: (Ya /Yw) × 100. Of
course, Ya is not only determined by soil processes even though they
play a dominant part. Still, the analysis also allows an independant
evaluation of several soil degradation effects such as erosion and
compaction, while also effects of a hypothetically increased organic
matter content can be explored. This procedure also allows a
distinction between actual soil health [soil condition] for a given soil
at a given time and for inherent soil quality [soil capability]
expressing the range of soil health values that a particular soil can
possess at different locations as a function of management, as
expressed by [soil] phenoforms. Soil classification focuses on con­
stant or stable soil features and should, therefore, not change
following different short-term management practices. But these
practices cannot be ignored when considering land evaluation and
that’s why [soil] phenoforms are distinguished linking soils with
land use objectives.
A similar calculation could be developed for the regulation function,
e.g., for ground or stream-water quality.
The link to soil connectivity would be by means of soil maps that
show the soil phenoforms, and which are regularly updated to show the
changes in soil condition. These changes could be due to multiple
changes in soil functions, each combination resulting in a soil pheno­
form. Another set of maps could show the condition ratios for various
functions.
9. The way forward
Soil mapping and the names given to soil map units by soil classifi­
cation systems are still mostly based on the concept of the ideal soil and
one-off mapping. Human-altered soils are mostly considered as variants
Soil Security 5 (2021) 100017
of “natural” soils with the same pedogenesis that does not consider
human influence, so that one genoform is recognized. The resulting
maps thus do not recognize substantial differences in soil functions
within map units. It is more useful to recognize the soil as it is and map
the soil as it occurs on the landscape. To do this, classification systems
must be adapted to recognize stable soil genoforms that are the result of
human activity, but which are currently classified with substantially
different soil phenoforms. The various kinds of soil phenoforms must
also be identified and named, possibly as a lower level in a hierarchical
classification, or as a separate classification orthogonal to genoform
classification. Mapping must be periodically updated to keep up with
changes in soil phenoforms, or the appearance of new soil genoforms; A
time-series of maps opens the possibility to communicate changes in soil
condition to stakeholders.
Declaration of Competing Interests
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Prof. Johan Bouma for valuable comments on the
first draft of this paper; several of his ideas have been incorporated in the
revision.
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