Soil Carbon Sponge 🧽
A key indicator of healthy soil
In the picture below 👇 : Living healthy soil has a sponge-like structure just like the bread. Degraded and dead earth behaves like the flour.
The soil sponge is how life keeps water on land, and it is foundational for all of the processes that depend on water. Without a healthy soil sponge, life cannot survive or thrive on land. What is it? The soil sponge is the biological arrangement of tiny broken down rocks (sand, silt and clay) into a sponge-like matrix that has structural and functional integrity. It is created by plants and by life underground. It has two essential qualities that seem unlikely to exist at in the same structure, but that’s what makes a soil sponge (and a kitchen sponge) so amazing: It absorbs, infiltrates, and holds water in its pores. The pore spaces form when life (roots, fungi, earthworms, and all the underground inhabitants in a life-filled landscape) moves through this sturdy matrix that keeps these tunnels from collapsing. It is also water resistant so it doesn’t fall apart. The mineral particles are held together by plant root hairs and fungal hyphae, and by biological slimes, biofilms, and glues. The biological slimes that hold soil aggregates together are water resistant (ever tried to wash a biological slime–like raw egg or mucus–after it has dried and hardened?) In a vibrant landscape, all of life contributes ongoingly to building, repairing, and maintaining a soil sponge.
📖 Read the full article by Didi Perhouse