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As well as being desirable from an environmental perspective, healthy soils also permit higher yields. Yet many agricultural practices accelerate soil degradation, while climate change and biodiversity loss exacerbate problems.
This has prompted countries all over the world to introduce policies designed to protect the quality of their arable land—clearly with some degree of success, as the new study shows. “We compared satellite images from 2001 through to 2019,” explains Guyo Dureti. “This enabled us to measure how the biomass of agricultural crops has changed year on year in the areas cultivating them.”
Analyzing 250,000 areas spread across the globe
The economist and agricultural scientist is studying for his doctorate at the University of Bonn in the Land Economics Group led by Professor David Wuepper, a member of the Cluster of Excellence “PhenoRob” and the Transdisciplinary Research Area (TRA) “Sustainable Futures.” Analyzing the satellite imagery was merely the first step in the study, because an increase in agricultural biomass does not necessarily indicate an improvement in soil condition. After all, the differences could instead have been caused by natural climate factors (e.g. changes in precipitation and temperature levels) and agricultural practices such as applying more fertilizer and investing in mechanization and irrigation.
