Soil Cover as a Conservation Strategy: an Educational Experience with Children

Soil is a fundamental component of the Earth system, essential for maintaining environmental quality, supporting food production, regulating water cycles, and sustaining life. Despite its importance, soil-related knowledge is often disconnected from everyday experiences and insufficiently addressed in basic education.

This study demonstrated the importance of soil to 77 children aged 5 to 19 years through educational workshops held in celebration of World Soil Day. Participants came from both public and private schools. The event included seven educational activities, with one activity conducted at our stand, lasting approximately 20 minutes per group. The workshops emphasized soil preservation as a natural resource that is non-renewable on a human time scale, focusing on water erosion, a degradation process that affects more than 33% of soils worldwide.

The objective was to develop low-cost experiments using accessible materials for educational purposes. Plastic bottles cut in half were used to simulate three management conditions: bare soil, soil with living plant cover, and soil with dead plant cover. The setups were inclined at approximately 30°, and rainfall was simulated for 15 minutes at an intensity of 120 mL per minute, totaling 1,800 mL per treatment. Infiltration, rill formation, runoff volume, and turbidity were visually compared. A guided discussion at the end confirmed participants’ understanding of the protective role of soil cover in reducing erosion, reinforcing the effectiveness of hands-on outreach in promoting environmental awareness.