Soil Restoration Strategies for Sustaining Soil Productivity: A Review

Abstract

Soil degradation, characterised by a deterioration in quality and a drop in ecosystem products and services, is a key impediment to obtaining the necessary increase in agricultural productivity. Soil is a living and dynamic organism that degrades when standard agricultural practices are used. Healthy soil is a crucial pillar of sustainability because it provides various ecosystem services in addition to controlling microbial activity, nutrient recovery, and decomposition. In human time spans, soil is a non-renewable resource that is vulnerable to deterioration due to complex interactions between processes, variables, and causes occurring at a variety of geographical and temporal dimensions. Accelerated erosion, depletion of the soil organic carbon (SOC) pool and biodiversity loss, loss of soil fertility and elemental imbalance, acidification and salinization are among the key soil degradation processes. The strategy aims to minimize soil erosion, boost SOC and N budgets, boost soil biota activity and species diversity (macro, meso, and micro), and improve structural stability and pore geometry. Improving soil quality (i.e., expanding the SOC pool, improving soil structure, and boosting soil fertility) can lower the hazards of soil degradation (physical, chemical, biological, and ecological) while also benefiting the environment.