Soil enzymes: health and quality indicators

Abstract

In the presence of a crescent demand of food, fibres, environmental protection for an urban society in constant expansion, impoverishment of the natural non renewable resources and the serious alterations that the environmental global quality has suffered, concepts of health and quality of soils are exposed as part of the whole of tools used to define sustainability, in other words, the maintenance of their functions inside the limits of an ecosystem. The health and quality indicators are a set of measurements (physical, chemical and biological properties) that pretend to establish quality standards for this resource; the enzymatic activity is placed inside this set because of its close relationship with the other properties and because of its sensibleness to the changes due to handling and use. The present review pretends to illustrate how the tracking of the biological catalysis of the soil through uses and alterations that an ecosystem may suffer, may supply information for the understanding of how the processes responsible for the maintenance of functions such as biomass production, pollutant remediation and cycling of nutrients, suffer changes and if these are positive, negative or iterative.

Keywords

• Enzimas del Suelo
• Indicadores
• Salud y Calidad
• Sostenibilidad