Abstract
Research over the past twenty years has demonstrated clearly that the environment is not infinitely resilient to anthropogenic activities, such as land management and use, fugitive emissions from industry and waste utilisation on land. Consequently, in national and international strategies aimed at sustainable development, where the maintenance of environmental capital is a key feature, environmental protection plays an important role. Thus, air, water and soil quality may be viewed as indicators of sustainable development. Of the three environmental media, environmental standards have been developed for both air and water but soil has received far less attention [1], despite the fact that it interacts strongly with the other media and frequently performs an important role in buffering living systems from environmental pollution. A number of factors have contributed to this situation including the multifunctional role played by soil in the environment [2], the complex interactions of chemical, physical and biological processes that contribute to soil quality [3], and, finally, the spatial and temporal scales over which these processes operate. However, it is the authors’ view that soil quality can provide a valuable conceptual framework within which many of these aspects can be integrated.
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Paterson, E., Towers, W., Langan, S.J. (2000). The Use of Soil Data to Predict Environmental Sensitivity to Pollution. In: Wilson, M.J., Maliszewska-Kordybach, B. (eds) Soil Quality, Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Security in Central and Eastern Europe. NATO Science Series, vol 69. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4181-9_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4181-9_15
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