Soils in war and peace
Yuriy Dmytruk, Vasyl Cherlinka, Liubov Cherlinka, David Dent
Abstract
Our purpose is a preliminary assessment of the effects of war in Ukraine on its soils. Realistic diagnosis demands details at the scale at which war operates. Lacking a soil map at this scale, and a new survey being out of the question, we modelled a predictive soil map of the whole country at scale 1:10,000. This enables accurate assessment of the areas of damage and the ecosystem services foregone. Mimicking personalised medicine and the precision-agriculture principle, farm by soil type, we can now set about healing by soil type – drawing on the particular resilience of particular soils and make allowance for their weaknesses too. For instance, chernozem have extraordinary resilience and self-healing capacity; a calcareous clay can fix radionuclides but peat soils have no such capacity.