TY - JOUR T1 - Achieving soil sustainability JF - Journal of Soil and Water Conservation SP - 156 LP - 157 VL - 47 IS - 2 AU - Joe A. Friend Y1 - 1992/03/01 UR - http://www.jswconline.org/content/47/2/156.abstract N2 - AS judged by conventional resource and environmental textbooks, most of society still seems to believe that soils are a renewable resource. However, this is not academic opinion in some countries, such as Australia, where largely fragile, leached, or depleted soils have been worked hard for several generations. The leading edge of academic thinking now is that a majority of world soils, apart from the deepest and most rapidly forming, are nonrenewable within a human lifetime. Estimated rates of soil formation are so slow as to be negligible in real terms or less than the rate of nutrient extraction from upper zones of the soil profile. The question of renewability The data, analysis, and proof that soils are, with few exceptions, nonrenewable can be used to show that short-term time frames are not really appropriate for sensible land use planning, the conversion of one land use to another, or monitoring land use factors. Land development planning has become burdened by the short-term political decision process that rests upon change taking place within … ER -