The Meta Soil Model: An Integrative Multi-Model Framework for Soil Security.

In the Anthropocene, processes and response feedbacks to soil-ecosystems have accelerated, jeopardizing the sustainability and resilience of the soil resource at local, regional, and global scales. Over the past decades exponential population growth, global climate change, economic imbalances, and drastic land use shifts have imposed profound imprints onto soil-ecosystems impacting global soil, food, bio-, energy, water and human security. A new integrative framework is needed that facilitates to better synthesize data, maps, knowledge, understanding, interpretations, beliefs, values and actions related to soils considering multiple perspective-dimensions, such as soil-environment, soil-politics and soil-human.  Therefore, we propose a Meta Soil Model (MSM) to synthesize the six dimensions of soil security with the six C’s: condition, capability, capital, codification, connectivity and cognizance. We define a MSM as an integrative, multi-model framework to assess soil security within the context of regional and global human-environmental interactions.  This integral inspired MSM framework facilitates not only soil, soil-ecosystem and soil-human system syntheses, but also allows to quantify integration trajectories that connect the different dimensions of soil security. The MSM fosters enactment for securing soils rooted in inter-, trans- and post-disciplinary (integral) thinking. It is anchored in Integral Theory that interlinks four quadrants: (i) individual-interior comprising subjective experiences of the soil-environment, (ii) collective-interior (i.e., culturally flavored communication that impact soil security, values and beliefs of people about soils and nature), (iii) individual-exterior (i.e., soil management, soil use, soil processes, etc.), and (iv) collective-exterior (e.g., global and national governance structures, soil related policies, financial resources provided to secure soils, etc.). Quantitative and qualitative integration pathways are core components in the MSM that consists of data-of-data and models-of-models describing soils-of-soilscapes embedded within systems-of-systems. Integration pathways are profoundly important to interconnect within and across the six soil security dimensions and include meta analysis, ensembles, scenarios, sequential soil-ecosystem modeling, and more.