Diversity of soil-landscape relationships: State of the art and future challenges

Abstract

Pedology and geomorphology are considered independent scientific disciplines, but form in fact a single indivisible system. The diversity analysis of natural resources tries to account for the variety of forms and spatial patterns that display the natural bodies, biotic and abiotic, appearing at the earth’s surface. The application of mathematical tools to diversity analysis requires a classification of the universe concerned. Biodiversity studies have a long tradition in comparison to earth sciences. Recently pedologists started paying attention to soil diversity using the same mathematical tools as ecologists use and reaching interesting relations between the spatial patterns of soil and vegetation. So far geodiversity studies are only concerned by the preservation of the geological heritage, bypassing most of the aspects related to its spatial distribution. Vegetation scientists have developed a classification that links climate and plant communities, the so-called syntaxonomic system. The purpose of this chapter is to explore a perspective of joining soils, geoforms, climate, and biocenoses in an integrated and comprehensive approach to describe the structure and diversity of the earth surface systems.