Advances in landscape-scale soil research

Soil science has traditionally focused on relatively static soil properties in order to provide a stable basis for soil taxonomy. Developments in related earth science disciplines are offering new tools and insights of direct relevance to pedology. Soils can now be described and studied as dynamic entities in a landscape context connected by various means. Landscape processes and land management are the main agents in shaping and changing soils. We believe that integration of the conceptual and methodological advances in related disciplines with pedological research offers rich possibilities for the development of a truly landscape-scale pedology. Landscape-scale pedology also provides the linkage between soil processes and soil surveys, and this linkage is essential for up scaling of soil process information to regional, national, and global scales. A recent spin-off of global change research is that human actions are seen as a central issue in this research. Furthermore, the notion of soils as a component of complex systems with positive and negative feedbacks is becoming a leading concept in earth system science.