World’s Soil Resources

process or phenomenon that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, loss
of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental damage”. Projected human
population expansion, agricultural intensification, and greater human presence and infrastructure in
mountainous regions combined with projected changes in climate extremes (IPCC, 2012) are expected to
jointly contribute to enhanced vulnerability to soil-mediated natural hazards (Figure 7.9). The extent of the
vulnerability and exposure to a particular type of hazard vary considerably among regions (ESPON, 2013).
For example, floods may increase in flat terrains with increasing mean precipitation or rapid snowmelt, and
landslides may become more common in mountainous areas with changes in the seasonality and intensity of
rainfall (Huggel, Clague and Korup, 2012).
Figure 7.9 A conceptual sketch of how vulnerability, exposure and external events (climate, weather, geophysical) contribute to the
risk of a natural hazard. Source: IPCC, 2012.
The past few decades have been marked by an increase in the frequency and magnitude of damages caused
by soil-climate related hazards such as landslides (Figure 7.10, FAO 2011). In part this increase may be simply
attributed to more timely and accurate reporting, and also to deeper human penetration into soil-hazard
prone regions, facilitated by increases in mobility and personal wealth (Keiler, 2013; Papathoma-Köhle et al.,
2015). The reports of EM-DAT (http://www.emdat.be/publications) provide a global perspective of all aspects of
natural disasters and their human and economic impacts. The 2013 EM-DAT 1 report estimates global damages
by natural hazard attributed to hydrological and geophysical causes (most closely related to soil) in excess of
US$ 60 billion, with impacts on the lives of 40 million people in 2013 alone. It is instructive to place the various
natural hazards in their soil-human-climate context to enable general inferences and detection of future
trends with global change (population growth, land use, and climate change).
1 http://www.emdat.be/publications
Status of the World’s Soil Resources | Main Report The impact of soil change on ecosystem services
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