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Pristinia: A tool for the exergy assessment of topsoil fertility

Abstract:

Soils degradation and erosion is not a question of yes or no. They must be analyzed in detail to evaluate their remediation costs due to a series of causes, mainly the overexploitation of farming systems. In a previous work, exergy was proposed as a tool to assess the quality and fertility of soils due to their inorganic components, taking into account their texture and nutrients. This work broadens the vision, proposing a methodology for exergy assessment of organic and biological properties of the soil capable of evaluating the quality of the agricultural soil as a whole. As a general theoretical line to perform exergy evaluation of the soils, we introduce an ideal fertile planetary crust, the “OptSOIL”, which has optimal attributes based on agronomic knowledge. We call this imaginary crust-copiously fertile-Pristinia instead of Thanatia, a dead state is referring to abiotic resources. Thus, any real agricultural soil will be an intermediate soil between Pristinia and Thanatia. The exergy values of “OptSOIL” are calculated using Thanatia as a reference. Thanatia represents the maximum state of degradation and is the baseline to measure the exergy of substances on Earth through their abundances. Therefore, a complete exergetic methodology is obtained based on the inorganic and organic properties of the soil. This allows the estimation of the exergy value enclosed in each soil and evaluating its quality and fertility compared with other soils.