Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021 Sep 27;376(1834):20200178.
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0178. Epub 2021 Aug 4.

The role of soils in the regulation of hazards and extreme events

P M Saco  1 , K R McDonough  1 , J F Rodriguez  1 , J Rivera-Zayas  2 , S G Sandi  1
Affiliations
Review

The role of soils in the regulation of hazards and extreme events

P M Saco et al. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. .

Abstract

The frequency and intensity of natural hazards and extreme events has increased throughout the last century, resulting in adverse socioeconomic and ecological impacts worldwide. Key factors driving this increase include climate change, the growing world population, anthropogenic activities and ecosystem degradation. One ecologically focused approach that has shown potential towards the mitigation of these hazard events is the concept of nature's contributions to people (or NCP), which focuses on enhancing the material and non-material benefits of an ecosystem to reduce hazard vulnerability and enhance overall human well-being. Soils, in particular, have been identified as a key ecosystem component that may offer critical hazard regulating functionality. Thus, this review investigates the modulating role of soils in the regulation of natural hazards and extreme events, with a focus on floods, droughts, landslides and sand/dust storms, within the context of NCP. This article is part of the theme issue 'The role of soils in delivering Nature's Contributions to People'.

Keywords: ecosystem services; extreme events; natural hazards; nature's contributions to people; soil function; soil regulating contributions.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Number of disasters per decade. Note: data obtained from CRED [1]. (Online version in colour.)
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Sustainable management practices, soil characteristics and mechanisms contributing to hazard regulation, and threats to hazard regulation services from soils. (Online version in colour.)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. CRED. 2020. EM-DAT the international disaster database. Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium: Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). See https://public.emdat.be/.
    1. De Guenni LB, Cardoso M, Goldammer J, Hurtt G, Mata LJ, Ebi K, House J, Valdes J. 2005. Regulation of natural hazards: floods and fires. In Ecosystems and human well-being: current state and trends (ed. Norgaard R), pp. 441-454. Washington, DC: Island Press.
    1. Ritchie, H. 2020. Natural disasters. Oxford, UK: Global Change Data Lab. See https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters (accessed November 2020).
    1. Munang R, Thiaw I, Alverson K, Liu J, Han Z. 2013. The role of ecosystem services in climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 5, 47-52. (10.1016/j.cosust.2013.02.002) - DOI
    1. Pielke RA Jr, Downton MW. 2000. Precipitation and damaging floods: trends in the United States, 1932–97. J. Clim. 13, 3625-3637. (10.1175/1520-0442(2000)013<3625:PADFTI>2.0.CO;2) - DOI

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources