INTERDISCIPLINARY AND MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF LONG-TERM SOIL DEGRADATION: A CASE STUDY FROM SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN, GERMANY

Soil degradation is a serious problem and an important environmental issue in many ecosystems. Without integrative, interdisciplinary and historical approaches, understanding the effects of long-term soil degradation is difficult. According to this idea it is hypothesized that in order to study long-term natural and human-induced soil degradation, it is necessary to use interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches with respect to temporal and spatial landscape changes. The results of the investigation of colluvial sediments and soils in research area in Schleswig-Holstein (Germany) with a high resolution in space and time-using the four-dimensional landscape analysis-indicated the temporal and spatial variation of soils and sediments from the Mesolithic until Modern times. Intensive soil degradation occurred as a result of the land clearance and agricultural land use in the investigation areas since the Neolithic time. The general results of this investigation show that the use of an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach with pedological and geomorphological perspectives for different times and places can help to reconstruct the long-term natural and human-induced soil degradation. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.