Here’s a great book chapter from Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s book Matters of Care all about caring for soil (sorry for my highlights!)Bellacasa_Soil Times.pdf (1.2 MB)
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Here’s a wonderful text on eating dirt and its commodification by the artist A. Laurie Palmer: http://nomorepotlucks.org/site/whitedirt-com-a-laurie-palmer/
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@ROBOTMIKE shared me this amazing piece the other day on the work of artist Mel Chin. It’s about a piece of his from the 90s called “Revival Field” where he, in part, reframed scientific research on soil bioremediation (hyperaccumulation of heavy metals by plants) that couldn’t get funded as art, and was able to install and run it in a bunch of different places - one of the places being STUTTGART in 2000-01, 10 years after it was originally conceived. The attention his piece got is credited with drumming up interest in the field of phytoremediation, leading to more research.
Here’s the documentation of the work, curated at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart in collaboration with Hohenheim University, Department of Plant Nutrition: http://www.haussite.net/haus.0/gh/rfs.html
The picture up top and this really nice video are from his website
https://vimeo.com/43795366
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NOOOOOOO!!!
without soil???
this is so off-topic… 
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Off topic, but still… to think about Soil is to think about Soil being based on air, water, minerals and sun 
I’d estimate that only an astonishingly small biomass of the worlds plant cells depend on soil. That Soil is a relatively new invention of life. Its not really air based, its still liquid nutrients.
@punkish how do they keep the nutrient in a mist?
true, algae do not depend on soil.
but what is soil anyway?
I would argue that hydroponics/aquaponics and maybe even aeroponics produce a very thin layer of ‘soil-like’ substances around the roots. there is definitely a lot of microbial action going on there…
@julian I’m afraid I didn’t see the emogi (or process it). Its not really off topic
#AreWeNotSoilLike?
“das isch scho super!”
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just reading again about numbers of bacteria et al on this planet, where they are, and what kinda structures they build… BIOFILMS! and they are all deep deep down in the deep subsurface!
Another interesting paper:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41579-019-0178-5
Hutchins (2019) REVIEW - Climate change microbiology.pdf (740.0 KB)
„In this Viewpoint article, several experts in the field discuss the microbial contributions to climate change and consider the effects of global warming, extreme weather, flooding and other consequences of climate change on microbial communities in the ocean and soil, on host microbiota interactions and on the global burden of infectious diseases and ecosystem processes, and they explore open questions and research needs.“
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hei Julisn, so nice you share.
Can you send the article to use. free access not guaranted
the pdf is there… look again 
Hmmm… checking this special issue and trying to reflect on what kinda methods to use for “measuring soil”.
Selection of biological indicators appropriate for European soil monitoring
2016_Selectionofbiologicalindicators.pdf (1.5 MB)
This overview shows what kinda methods came out as most insightful.
Fig. 2. Aggregated Factor Scores [ F A] for the list of indicators assessed. [ F A] is calculated using multiplied Function Factor Score [ F SF] values and incorporates the ability of each indicator to be relevant to all the functions intended to be monitored.
I know we all like our microscopes and soil chambers… but this study kinda points very strongly towards “molecular methods”, which might mostly involved PCR systems? gotte read more details of what they mean with it.
the other is a more elaborate soil respiration measurement called MSIR… multiple substrate induced respiration…
https://webshop.ats-net.com/epages/ATS.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/ATS/Products/214.36.3120
On the other hand, i also really like the #SoilMyUndies 
and they haven’t even considered it in their study!!
I was reading about this farmers soil microscopy group in Australia and I have found the calico strip test very similar to my undies… not standard method but …
this land-use / soil report will come out soon…
BBC News - Stop abusing land, scientists warn
3 more reports:
-
Global soil biodiversity atlas - from the european commission
https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/content/global-soil-biodiversity-atlas -
WWF on biodiversity - including soil (it gives a very general overview)
https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1187/files/original/LPR2018_Full_Report_Spreads.pdf -
Mitigation and compensation of soil sealing (european commission)
https://ec.europa.eu/environment/soil/pdf/guidelines/pub/soil_en.pdf
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Would you like to come to the HUMUS sapiens retreat 2019?
Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.