Soil Landscape Rehabilitation with Microbial and Remote Sensing Insights for Yield and Carbon Recovery

Abstract

Soil degradation is quietly eroding the productive and climate-regulating capacity of agricultural landscapes. On many farms, eroded hilltops and shoulders are left shallow, compacted, and carbon-poor, while lower slope positions collect sediment and nutrients in uneven ways. The result is a patchwork of yield potential and a steady decline in soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks at the very moment when agriculture is being asked to produce more food and help mitigate climate change. Soil landscape rehabilitation offers a way to actively rebuild these damaged systems rather than simply slowing further loss. Practices such as top-soil replacement, landscape reshaping, organic amendments, and diversified crop rotations can restore soil depth, improve structure, and create conditions that favor carbon accumulation. At the same time, soil microbial communities are now recognized as key drivers of recovery: they build aggregates, cycle nutrients, suppress diseases, and control how much carbon is stored or lost. Diversified crop sequences and organic inputs tend to foster richer, more resilient microbial communities that support both yield and carbon gains. Remote sensing and Earth observation add a third, crucial dimension. By tracking vegetation vigor, surface soil properties, moisture status, and structural changes from above, they make it possible to monitor rehabilitation outcomes from individual fields to entire regions. This review brings these strands together. It synthesizes field-based approaches to soil landscape rehabilitation, explains the microbial mechanisms that underpin lasting yield and carbon recovery, and explores how remote sensing can be used to track and guide rehabilitation efforts. The paper concludes with a practical framework and research agenda for integrating management, biology, and technology in climate-smart soil restoration.