Mapping soil knowledge: A qualitative comparison of laypeople’s understanding of soil and expert-identified essentials in Germany

Soils play a critical role in mitigating climate change, conserving biodiversity, and supporting human well-being. To ensure a sustainable future for soil, raising the publićs awareness of soil conservation and enhancing their knowledge is crucial. This qualitative study captures and represents laypeople’s soil knowledge through concept maps. These concept maps, along with the associated knowledge, were gathered through semi-structured interviews based on the approach of didactic reconstruction and are compared with expert-identified essentials for laypeople. These Laypeople demonstrate basic knowledge of certain aspects, such as the decomposition process, organisms and plant interactions with soil, and human impacts on degradation. However, notable gaps exist in soil genesis, its role in climate protection, and perception of soil texture, types, and processes, including misconceptions about erosion. This study underscores the importance of education and awareness-building in soil conservation efforts. The concept maps generated in this study can serve as a basis for this purpose.