Soil Evolution, Management, and Sustainable Utilization

Dear Colleagues,

Soil is the collection of natural bodies on the earth’s surface that supports plant life, and the foundation of food security and the cornerstone of biological health. With the excessive utilization of soil resources by human beings, soil degradation such as soil compaction, barrier layer, imbalance of nutrient ratio, salinization, and soil contamination appear, causing soil function degradation, restricting food production, and threatening food security. Efficient, safe, and healthy soil management is an important measure to realize the sustainable development of the whole social economy, environment, and human health. How to improve soil health levels, especially agricultural soil systems through soil resource management; how to make food production safer and more sufficient; and how to ensure the sustainable development of a healthy planet—these are all urgent challenges that need to be solved by soil science researchers. It is necessary to first analyze the soil formation factors and evolution mechanism of soil resources in an area and clarify the soil evolution rate, degradation, and restrictive mechanism.

Therefore, this Special Issue will collect new developments and methodologies, best practices, and applications related to the science of soil evolution, management, and sustainable utilization, especially in agricultural soil systems. We welcome submissions that provide the community with the most recent advancements in all aspects of soil, crop, agriculture, management, and life, including but not limited to the following:

• Soil biodiversity;
• Soil evolution;
• Spatial and temporal changes in soil organic carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, heavy metals, salinity, and others in representative areas;
• The relationships between soil properties and human activities;
• Inversion of soil properties from single and/or multisource sensor-based data (e.g., multispectral, hyperspectral, thermal, LiDAR, SAR, gas, radioactivity sensors);
• Emerging approaches to characterizing properties and greenhouse gas emissions;
• Earth's critical zone;
• Soil modeling;
• Digital soil mapping;
• Soil health evaluation;
• Climate change and soils;
• Cultivated soil management;
• Soils for sustainable agriculture;
• Intelligent agriculture.

Dr. Zhongxiu Sun
Dr. Jinlong Dong
Dr. Long Guo
Dr. Xiaodong Song
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• soil evolution
• soil management
• sustainable utilization