Tonight at the Rose café, Dr. Dawit Solomon gave a lecture introducing his field of soil science. Dr. Solomon covered a wide variety of topics in the lecture, but for me the most interesting part was his explanation of why soil and its study matter.

First he showed us a slide with two maps, one marking areas with high levels of soil degradation and the other showing global levels of nutrition. It amazed me to see how closely the areas of soil disruption correlated with regions of high malnutrition especially in Africa. He then went on to explain that soil degradation is also a key factor in climate change, as soil currently contains higher levels of carbon than the surrounding atmosphere. This means that disruption of the soil through natural events or human mismanagement releases stores of carbon into the environment thus contributing to global warming. The solution to this problem is to return excess carbon back into the soil, but this is something that Dr. Solomon says scientists are still working to learn how to do.

Dr. Solomon ended his lecture on a hopeful note, by talking about recent research into indigenous soil enrichment methods in Brazil and Africa. This research has helped soil scientists develop new types of fertilizer which they believe will add carbon back into the soil. Before this lecture, I was not aware that advances like this in soil science could potentially have a huge impact on multiple global problems like world hunger and climate change.