Characteristics and Functions of Urban Soils

25-45

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200209614

Soils in Urban Ecosystem, 25-45

Urbanization started more than 5000 years ago in rich agricultural areas in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus valley, China and Central America on agricultural or forest land (Hooke et al. 2012). Today approximately 2.7% of the land surface (except Antarctica) is urbanized (Lal and Stewart 2018). Urban soils are spatially and vertically diverse, with a great variability along a gradient from nature-like to technical composed soils with high degree of artefacts having characteristics which are distinct from non-urban soils (Greinert 2015; Lehmann and Stahr 2007). Whereas the production function is the most important function in agricultural soil, soil as carrier and medium for engineering is the most obvious one in the city.