What Soil Does

Healthy soil gives us clean air and water, bountiful crops and forests, productive rangeland, diverse wildlife, and beautiful landscapes.

Soil can do all this by performing five essential functions:

1. Regulating water. Soil helps controls rain, snowmelt, and irrigation water and where it goes. Water and dissolved matter flow over the land or into and through the soil.

2. Supporting plant and animal life. The entire function of living things depends on soil.

3. Filters potential pollutants. The minerals and microbes in soil are responsible for filtering, buffering, degrading, immobilizing, and detoxifying organic and inorganic materials, including industrial and municipal by-products and atmospheric deposits.

4. Cycling nutrients. Carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and many other nutrients are stored, transformed, and cycled through soil.

5. Supporting structures. Buildings need stable soil for support, and archeological treasures associated with human habitation are protected in soils.

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