Our first practical and most critical task in any earnest effort at Earth Restoration must be to revive the worn-out, mineral depleted, biology-deficient soils of our farms and forests. Today, if only from decades of acid rain, all soils are damaged, both chemically and biologically. Without healthy, balanced, fertile, living soil strong enough to supply a full menu of minerals and microbes, the land can't support lush vegetation and abundant animal life—nor healthy humans.

Without soil renewal, all efforts at ecological repair and restoration will fall short—and more likely, fail.

Acid Rain in Soil Destruction Acid rain unquestionably accelerates soil weathering, causing soil to age faster. Since concern about acid rain began, scientists believed acids deplete essential nutrients. Research in the 1980s attempted to understand acid rain effects, particularly in regions with limited or little buffering capacity, such as soils from parent geologies containing little calcium. Numerous studies show that chemical processes of acid deposition result in forest losses in the eastern U.S. Low pH in the upper A soil horizon is caused by organic acids produced by natural decomposition of organic matter. Organic acids percolate down into soil’s mineral layers, with little organic matter, where organic acids are broken down and quickly absorbed onto mineral surfaces. After silica, aluminum is the most abundant soil element. Silica and aluminum combine to form one of the most critical minerals necessary for soil life: high energy agricultural clays. High-energy clay breakdown results in excess leaching due to loss of exchange sites in the lower B horizon. Weathering dissolves calcium carbonate (CaCO3), especially in glacial till, which exerts preserving effects. Dissolving calcium speeds weathering and soil destruction. Areas of heavy to moderate rainfall can lose considerable calcium from leaching and erosion. Without soil calcium, acid rain releases aluminum. Unlike organic acids, sulfuric and nitric acids in rain and chemical fertilizers don’t break down, and tend to stay in solution in mineral layers, to speed up weathering. The result is calcium loss, weathering of clay minerals, and mobilizing aluminum and other toxic metals. An increasing concentration of mobile aluminum is taken up by roots, and eventually recycled up to the forest floor. Dissolved aluminum is also transported to the forest floor by a rising water table, especially where a water table is close to the surface. Aluminum has greater affinity for negatively charged surfaces than calcium, and thus displaces calcium, resulting in aluminum toxicity. Aluminum toxicity is widespread, and a major limitation to world food production, especially where food production and population growth are critical. Aluminum toxicity is persistent and progressive, and will not go away. Aluminum toxicity is ubiquitous, meaning it affects animals, plants and microbes. Plants get aluminum from aluminum dissolved in soil solution. In plants, aluminum toxicity results in poor plant health, yields, and nutrient content. This has pronounced effects on mycorrhizal fungi, resulting in poor nitrogen fixation. In plant tissue, 300 ppm of aluminum is considered toxic, and is common in soils with a pH of 5.5 or lower. Soils with higher pH generally have sufficient calcium carbonate to buffer against metal toxicities. Physical and chemical soil impaction can create impenetrable hardpan that isolates the root zone from potential alkaline subsoil, making aluminum toxicity a problem. The most important factor to plant health, nutrient uptake and soil restoration is eliminating aluminum and other metal toxicities. Effectively addressing this one problem significantly increases nutrient uptake, plant health and yields without additional fertilizer. Four major processes deplete cation-forming elements in soil, contributing to metal toxicities, clay mineral destruction, soil compaction, loss of microbial habitat, and poor nutrient content of feeds and foods: well-drained sandy soil formed from calcium-poor parent material acid rain deposition large doses of synthetic fertilizer hardpan by compaction isolates the root zone from cation-rich subsoil Best-case scenarios with cover crops and rotation lose up to 315 lbs/acre/year. Such cases are exceptions, so losses are more likely above 500 lbs/acre/year. Annual calcium losses from leaching and weathering exceed all other macronutrients. Thus, liming is crucial to manage fertility in soils with medium to heavy rainfall: 1.1 to 1.3 tons of CaCO3 in a 4 to 5 year rotation. Studies show silt-clay loam loses calcium: Bare Soil: 398 lbs/acre/year Rotated Cropland: 230 lbs/acre/year Continuous Grass: 260 lbs/acre/year Even 4% slopes lose topsoil to erosion: Continuous Corn: 220 lbs/acre/year Corn-Wheat-Clover Rotation: 85 lbs/acre/year Well documented effects of soluble synthetic fertilizers to acidify soil isn’t addressed. Each pound of phosphate fertilizer requires 3.6 to 5.4 pounds of calcium carbonate to neutralize acidity. Anhydrous ammonia: 1.8 lbs. CaCO3 per lb. of fertilizer Urea: 1.8 lbs. CaCO3 per lb. of fertilizer Ammonium nitrate: 1.8 lbs. CaCO3 per lb. of fertilizer Diammonium phosphate: 3.6 lbs. CaCO3 per lb. of fertilizer Ammonium sulfate: 5.4 lbs. CaCO3 per lb. of fertilizer Monoammonium phosphate: 5.4 lbs. CaCO3 per lb. of fertilizer

Amid the onset of peak oil and climate change, how do we put fertility in out soil to grow food, fiber, fuel, and lumber when the cost of oil crosses $100 a barrel?

Humans must become true stewards of the soil. We must renew the Natural World from the ground up by combining traditional methods of land conservation with new effective technologies to make new topsoil, fertile enough to sustain rapid, intensive restoration of biological diversity—especially trees and forests.

Recycle the Sea "My research clearly indicates the reason Americans generally lack a complete physiological chemistry is that the balanced, essential elements of the soil have eroded to the sea. Consequently, crops are nutritionally poor, and the animals eating these plants are, therefore, nutritionally poor. We must alter the way we grow our food, the way we protect our plants from pests and disease, and the way we process our food. From the start, my sea solids experiments produced excellent results, and it has now been conclusively proven that the proportions of the trace minerals and elements present in sea water are optimum for the growth and health of both land and sea life." —Dr. Maynard Murray Medical Research Doctor Sea Energy Agriculture

Bedrock into Biology
turning sunshine into sugar

To restore topsoil, our first action must be to assure an abundant supply of all the essential elements. The elements are primary atoms of physical matter. Elements are not man-made or synthetic. Only the Creator can make these elements—they can't be produced in a laboratory or manufactured in a factory.

These elements are supplied in the form of "minerals"—complex combinations of at least two or more chemical elements. Minerals are usually metals combined with oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, chlorine, other non-metals, and often hydrated with water. These minerals are blended together in crystalline and amorphous forms to become the rocks of the Earth. The science of Geology studies and classifies the thousands of minereals that are the bedrock of our planet.

Soil is made from rocks. Soil is decayed rock. Rocks are weathered and worn by wind and water into dust, grit and sand. The raw, elemental minerals exposed by this breakdown are then digested, reformed and transformed by microbes, algae, lichen and other simple lifeforms. The simplest organisms perform the primary task of transforming minerals into protoplasm.

now available Dr. Maynard Murray's Sea Solids SEA-90

Plants then combine these carbon-bound soil minerals with sunshine, water and carbon dioxide to create sugars, the universal fuel for biological life. Through the miracle of photosynthesis, magnesium in chlorophyll liberates oxygen and sunshine is captured in carbohydrates. As in the chlorophyll molecule itself, the minerals form the heart of biological cells, and supply the electric charges required to fire nature's chemical reactions.

Rocks are not equal in their ability to provide nutrients. Some rocks consist of only a few elements. Others contain a wide diversity of elements. Some rocks have concentrations of heavy metals. Some rocks contain an abundance of silica; others consist mainly of clay-forming minerals; others contain an excess of heavy metals. But many rocks contain of a wide diversity of trace elements, and are very suitable for making and renewing topsoil.

Determining what type of rock is best to renew one particular type of soil, or to remediate a special soil condition, becomes as complex as the Periodic Table of Elements, full of technical uncertainties, unknowns and uncontrolled variables. This complexity is multiplied because soils, too, come in a wide assortment of types, classes, chemical composition, and iological conditions.

Fortunately, Nature is forgiving, microbial life is incredibly rich and clever, and Earth offers multiple pathways to get us home safely and healthy. Human ingenuity guided by native intuition is capable of regenerating vast acreages of land in a short historical period. In only 100 years, much of the temperate zone can be reforested while still yielding agricultural abundance. And that is the challenge we face in the 21st Century as we recover from the damaging and depleting effects of industrial agriculture and forestry.

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The Earth Renewal and Restoration Alliance — www.championtrees.org — updated 8/31/2006