How are you protecting your property’s soil? Or rather, what’s the value in thinking about how to protect your property’s soil?
Let’s start with a quote:
“Essentially, all life depends upon the soil… There can be no life without soil and no soil without life; they have evolved together.” – Dr. Charles Kellogg, Soil Scientist & Chief of Bureau for Chemistry & Soils at USDA
What is the importance of healthy soil? Let us count the ways:
1. Soil is the base of healthful plant growth. Keeping the soil in place around the property is imperative due – at the root level – to the maintenance of both the natural and planted landscape and how it serves the function of healthy terrain. Healthy soil literally supports the forests, wetlands, jungles, prairies and grasslands that aide in your land, and the planet’s amazing vegetative biodiversity. It may seem elementary, but we’ll point it out anyway… Plants provide food, fuel, animal feed, medicine, and raw materials for clothing, household goods and other life essentials.
2. Plants in turn help prevent soil erosion. This feeds into the sentiment included in the last entry. Healthy soil leads to healthy plants, and healthy plants lead to a healthy, strong landscape. You want to keep your soil in place because it is the base of literally everything on your property. It’s not just a matter of keeping your garden from washing out. It’s a matter of keeping the integrity of any buildings on the property in optimal operative capacity as well. If the soil moves, your foundation can move. If your foundation moves, look out!
3. Erosion is the loss of soil from wind or water. So that erosion often stems from a large influx of water. Soil is imperative in working as a conduit of providing available water in appropriate quantities to sustain life. Soil and the vegetation it supports, as we’ve outlined above, catch and distribute rainwater and play an important role in the water cycle and supply. Soil distribution at the core can impact rivers, lakes, and streams; changing their shape, size, capacity and direction – which ultimately effects the properties that they run through or abut.
4. Controlling pollution is necessary. Quality soil can help. Generally speaking water absorption and filtration properties of soil play are imperative in reducing pollution from chemicals in pesticides and other compounds that jeopardize surrounding ecological environments.
5. Soil provides both the foundation and base materials for buildings, roads and other built infrastructure. Please, read on…
This is where Global Environmental Solutions comes into play. We literally started the business based on our desire to spend our days playing with soil and figuring out ways to best manage it with quality and the utmost care.
When it comes to soil – your most valuable asset – and taking care of it so that it can best serve your property, the biggest challenge of protecting your site’s soil is physically keeping it onsite.
GES provides solutions against soil loss.
The tagline of our key product DirtGlue is, “holding the earth together.” This is quite literally what we do. Keeping your soil in place can be accomplished by using an assortment of GES products (such as DirtGlue® polymer and DustLess®) to prevent wind and water erosion [sediment, and dust]. We’re not your typical suppressant solution (hello water) that you continuously need to reapply to keep your environment strong and healthy – we’ve worked up solutions that are tried and true and derived from environmentally benign compounds that best serve the environment while keeping your valuable soil in place. The applications we provide are solutions that target the issues that pertain to your own unique project/environment.
In short, GES Products protect your site’s soil from:
• Dust (your soil is too dry/arid and is getting swept away by wind and/or traffic, etc.)
• Sediment (your soil is victim to outside sources in the surrounding environment infiltrating your soil’s integrity)
• Erosion (your soil is too wet, subject to rain events and runoff, the environmental stimuli which are washing it away)
• And more
How do each of these things impact the surrounding environment?
Dust can be hazardous to the health of vegetation, human life, and ecosystems at large. It can cut down on the integrity of “sound” structure and landscaping and also cause visibility issues depending on what the site’s application is. Dust is more than just a nuisance, dust is a known killer. It’s best to keep it in place, or stop it from being a thing at all.
Sediment can clog drainage structures which leads to erosion, corrosion, mold, rot, etc. You don’t want any of this. It can also effect surrounding vegetation and the proper development of plants, as well as causing detriment to surrounding waterways and aquatic life. It’s not always easy to pinpoint, but it’s easier to control when managed.
Erosion literally washes the soil away and can damage property values and the integrity of the surrounding environment. Erosion can lead to dust, and sediment as addressed above. Once it starts, it’s hard to combat, so it’s important to consider it from the design phase of a project and utilizing remedial effort ideas as a means of addressing the “what ifs” of mother nature, surrounding environmental stimulus/factors, etc.
Let’s get back to Dr. Kellogg’s quote for a moment. Let’s look at the opening: “Essentially, all life depends upon the soil…” We take it to heart. And you should too. Life depends on the soil. Think about it. Think about where you are right now. Think about the structure you’re residing in at this very moment. Think about the path you took to get there. Think about the earth and the role we all play in helping it work best for us – and itself.
Global Environmental Solutions: For the earth, with the earth in mind.