Future Directions and Perspectives on Soil Environmental Researches

This paper reviews the future directions and perspectives on the soil environmental researches in the 21 century. Previously, the principal emphasis of soil environmental researches had put on the enhancement of food and fiber productions. Beside the basic function of soil, however, the societal needs on soil resources in the 21st century have demands for several environmental and social challenges, occurring regionally or globally. Typical global issues with which soil science should deal include food security with increasing agronomic production to meet the exploding world population growth, adaptation and mitigation of climate change, increase of the carbon sequestration, supply of the biomass and bioenergy, securing the water resource and quality, protection of environmental pollution, enhancing the biodiversity and ecosystem health, and developing the sustainable farming/cropping system that improve the use efficiency of water and agricultural resources. These challenges can be solved through the sustainable crop production intensification (SCPI) or plant welfare concept in which soil plays a key role in solving the abovementioned global issues. Through implementation of either concept, soil science can fulfill the goal of the modern agriculture which is the sustainable production of crops while maintaining or enhancing the ecosystem function, quality and health. Therefore, directions of the future soil environmental researches should lie on valuing soil as an ecosystem services, translating research across both temporal and spatial scales, sharing and using data already available for other purposes, incorporating existing and new technologies from other disciplines, collaborating across discipline, and translating soil research into information for stakeholders and end users. Through the outcomes of these approaches, soil can enhance the productivity from the same confined land, increase profitability, conserve natural resource, reduce the negative impact on environment, enhance human nutrition and health, and enhance natural capital and the flow of ecosystem services. Soil is the central dogma, final frontier and new engine for the era of sustainability development in the $21^{st}$ century and thus soil environmental researches should be carried according to this main theme.

토양환경분야 연구동향 및 전망