BSLA
/ TOOLBOX
SOIL
COMMUNICATION
I ’ m p art i c u larly i nt e r e s t e d i n
how t h e s e adv an c e s c a n h e l p
with g e t t i n g re al- t i me c r i t i c a l
in f ormat i on ab ou t t he s o i l
b ene at h ou r f e e t .
JAMES SOTTILO
L
ooking at an iPhone, with all its vast
applications and different ways of
communicating, it’s hard to fathom that
only twenty-or-so years ago cutting-edge
technology was a bulky mobile phone, a
fax, and a digital answering machine. Now
information is accessible across the globe
at the tap of an icon, making networking
possible in ways unimaginable back then.
While it’s impressive to use technology to
travel the world, it is particularly interesting
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BSLA
how these advances can help with getting
real-time critical information about the soil
beneath our feet. For landscape architects and
other landscape professionals this may make
the difference between success and failure.
Over the past fifteen years the importance
of soil biology for healthy planting soil
has come into sharp focus. The teeming
biological network in the soil is complex
and we have come to a more sophisticated