Soil Waste Management 

Vermicomposting

  • it is a process by which worms are used to convert organic materials into a humus like material known as vermin-compost.

What is a soil?

  • according to natural resources conservation services (NRCS) soil is the unconsolidated mineral or organic material on the immediate surface of the earth that serves as a natural medium for the growth of land plants.
  • Soil also forms in the PEDOSPHERE

What is pedosphere?

Pedosphere: is the foundation of terrestrial life/living skin of earth.

What does SOIL provides?

  • water and nutrients to plants and microbes
  • physical support system in which terrestrial vegetation is rooted.
  • source and sink for the biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur.
  • habitat for soil biota, mostly decomposers.

FACTORS AFFECTING SOIL FORMATION:

  • parent material
  • climate
  • topography
  • biological factors
  • time

Soil texture: it refers to the composition of the soil in terms of the amounts of small (clays), medium (silts), and large (sands) particles.

Soil profile

  • sequence of soil horizons from the surface down to the bedrock.

Regolith

  • loose heterogenous and superficial material covering the bedrock.

SOILD ORDERS

  • single dominant characteristics affecting soils in that location.

ORDERS:

  1. Alfisols: relatively high base saturation; not organic rich; evidence of clay transport.
  2. Andisols: derived major properties from volcanic parent material.
  3. Arid soils: low in organic matter
  4. Entisols: not well-developed even after long periods.
  5. Histosols: formed from organic matter
  6. Inceptisols: moderately weathered soils.
  7. Mollisols: high in organic matter, vermiculate or smectite.
  8. Oxisols: highly-weathered.
  9. Spodols: an organic matter transport
    1. Ultisols: low base saturation soils
    2. Vertisols: swelling days, frost, etc. cause lower horizons to mix with upper horizons.
    3. Gelisols: frozen soils.

Importance of soil

  1. arable land for agriculture
  2. regulating water and filtering potential pollutants
  3. nutrient cycling
  4. foundation and support
  5. mineral deposits