Soil aeration can in fact be a problem, particularly in urban areas. By doing things like covering soils with concrete and asphalt, you degrade the local environment even outside the covered areas and create barriers for flora and fauna even if it’s just a surface cover. Natural soils form air channels to the surface due to the activity of worms, plant roots, and fungal hyphae, and without those, the soil can become depleted in nutrients, namely gasses like oxygen and nitrogen, and unable to support life.
Soil compaction also contributes to this. When you have even a piece of uncovered soil, but cars or farm equipment frequently drive on it, it gets compacted, collapsing those air channels and making the entire soil tougher and less permeable. Kind of like you’re making sandstone. A common symptom of this if water just stays on the surface and doesn’t infiltrate. In severe cases, the surface can be completely flodded, but the soil just a centimetre underneath can be completely dry. This will also exacerbate flooding since you’ve lost the natural removal of water from the surface into the ground. In very severe cases, this can even contribute to the depletion of ground water.
Although why they would attribute this to the ongoing conflict is beyond me. It’s an ecological problem and needs to be addressed with better urban management to prevent further degradation, and ecological restoration to bring the soil back to a more natural state.
Soil aeration can in fact be a problem, particularly in urban areas. By doing things like covering soils with concrete and asphalt, you degrade the local environment even outside the covered areas and create barriers for flora and fauna even if it’s just a surface cover. Natural soils form air channels to the surface due to the activity of worms, plant roots, and fungal hyphae, and without those, the soil can become depleted in nutrients, namely gasses like oxygen and nitrogen, and unable to support life.
Soil compaction also contributes to this. When you have even a piece of uncovered soil, but cars or farm equipment frequently drive on it, it gets compacted, collapsing those air channels and making the entire soil tougher and less permeable. Kind of like you’re making sandstone. A common symptom of this if water just stays on the surface and doesn’t infiltrate. In severe cases, the surface can be completely flodded, but the soil just a centimetre underneath can be completely dry. This will also exacerbate flooding since you’ve lost the natural removal of water from the surface into the ground. In very severe cases, this can even contribute to the depletion of ground water.
Although why they would attribute this to the ongoing conflict is beyond me. It’s an ecological problem and needs to be addressed with better urban management to prevent further degradation, and ecological restoration to bring the soil back to a more natural state.