Take anything in your life and you can trace it back to soil. We could not survive without soils! While we are often not aware of it, soils really do directly or indirectly affect every part of our lives: from food, water and air availability and quality, to engineering implications to various essential ecosystem services, to influences on human cultures and careers. Soils produce our food: our crop plants are grown in soil, our livestock eat crops grown in soil, wildlife feeds on plants grown in soil, even fish eat plants, insects, etc, that at some point in their life-cycle were directly tied to soil.
The soil beneath my feet is important from several aspects; such as where should I build my home, from what will my house be made: brick or wood or adobe “From where does my water come” Underground aquifers or rivers, and how is it cleaned?
Soils are complex mixtures of minerals, water, air, organic matter, and countless organisms that are the decaying remains of once-living things. It forms at the surface of land – it is the “skin of the earth.” Soil is capable of supporting plant life and is vital to life on earth.