Importance Of Soil Composition

Soil isn’t important right? I mean, it’s just dirt. Well I’d hate to soil your fun, but there's something you need to know. Soil is very important. Time to unearth some lost knowledge, and puns.

Soil composition is a two way, dirt road. It gives what it takes and vice versa.

The soil of an area depends on climate, plant life, animal life, and human interference. For example, the soil of a city, buried under all the concrete, is different from the soil in the Scottish Highlands. While in the city there are only small animals and humans, the Scottish Highlands are populated by wolves, Highland cattle, and humans. In the city, plant life is scarce. This can affect the soil type as well. A plant is a living thing, made up of nutrients

A fjord by definition is a U-shaped inlet, formed by a glacier. Since Iceland is covered in glaciers, there’s quite a few. Typically a fjord is near a mountain, where the glacier slid from. From the article on nature.com: ‘Fjords soak up a surprising amount of carbon’, The article shows soil composition and the main ingredient. Carbon. Though the article on nature.com doesn’t provide very good coverage the article on mnn.com ‘Fjords hoard more carbon than we thought’ provides more coverage. Obviously plants use CO2 to make their food. So when a plant dies, where does the leftover CO2 when the plant dies? Does it just disappear? Well, in fact it goes back to the air. Unless its buried in soil or lost in the river. Remember how soil gives what it takes? Well what it gives, is what it took. When the plant is buried, the soil traps the CO2 it stays in the soil. Not only is that a factor in the amount of CO2, but the fact fjords are near mineral rich rivers changes things. It nearly doubles the amount of carbon in the soil of fjords. After all, According to the article on mnn.com called ‘Fjords hoard more carbon than we thought’: “ They sequester 18 million metric tons of carbon every year… That’s 11 percent of the total carbon absorbed…”

18,000,000 is quite the number. 18 metric tons is 39,683,207,193 pounds. A car is 4,079 pounds. The amount of carbon that fjords use worldwide would balance with about 9,728,636. That’s a lot. But what else is in the soil of the fjords