L'état de fertilité des terres agricoles et forestières en région wallonne (adapté du chapitre 4 - sol 1 de

Abstract

Fertility state of agricultural and forest soils in Walloon region. Feeding on plants and animals, the human societies are broadly dependent on soils because these, beyond their role as support of plant production, produce, contain, and collect the most part of the nutriments necessary to life. The sustainable management of the agricultural and forest soils implicates an uninterrupted assessment of their state by the measure of fertility indicators. This last is perceptible as the soil suitability to assume the plant biomass production. The soil suitability results from environmental physical, chemical and biological factors such as parental material, climate, etc. The human activities, particularly the agricultural and forest practices, also play a major role in the soil suitability. To avoid losses towards aquatic environment, these practices have to aim at satisfying the vegetables needs, while watching not to exceed the capacity of soil to keep the nutriments. Several tools exist in Walloon region to estimate the fertility state of soils, mainly at (physico-)chemical levels. This article introduces an outline of the agricultural, and forest soils state in various mineral and organic elements, and specify as well as possible involvements in other environmental problems.

Keywords

• agricultural soils
• Belgium
• fertility state
• forest soils
• Walloon Region