Advances in Urban Soils Science—SUITMA 9 International Congress Special Issue Zhongqi Cheng, 1 Viacheslav Vasenev, 2 Theodore Muth, 3 Kye-Hoon (John) Kim, 4 and Richard K. Shaw 5 T he past three decades have seen the rapid development of interest in urban soils all over the world. This is coincident with accelerated urbanization in both developed and developing countries—on the one hand, urbanization has brought many neg- ative consequences to soils in cities, and on the other hand, green spaces are in higher demand than ever before by urban residents. Urban soils are the key to long-term urban sustainability and re- siliency. In cities, soil-based approaches contribute to solutions for many of the environmental problems and challenges such as flooding, water quality, solid waste disposal, noise, public health, heat island effect, and food deserts. Urban soils are at the foundation of the urban ecosystem and its functions (Stroganova et al., 1997; Pickett et al., 2011). The role of urban soil is essential, indispens- able, and irreplaceable. Urban soils are unique in that they are often contaminated, lack nutrients, are very heterogeneous, and include human-transported and human-altered components. Understanding the characteristics, functions, development, and management strategies of urban soil is still in an early stage (Pouyat et al., 2010). In the United States, comprehensive urban soil surveys have only been completed in a few cities. While the value of agricultural lands can be assessed by the productivity of food, the ecosystem services provided by soil in urban areas extend far beyond food production. Urban soils also serve the health and well-being of a much larger population. It is still difficult to quantify and monetize the ecosystem services (or dis- services) that urban soils provide, especially over the long term. Research on urban soils has advanced significantly since the end of the 20th century, although it is still at an early stage. This is par- tially reflected in the number of publications found in the Scopus da- tabase (Fig. 1). In 2018, more than 200 publications contained “urban soils” or “urban soil” in the title, which is about nine times the number of publications in the year 2000. The percentage of soil science articles with these two keywords in the title has also in- creased to about 1.2% from around 0.25% before year 2000. It should be noted that the actual number of publications related to ur- ban soils is expected to be much higher. There is a need for more research and publications in this subject area and in a more organized fashion, especially in the United States. To our knowledge, there have been special issues on urban soils only in the Journal of Soils and Sediments in relation to the SUITMA (Soils in Urban, Industrial, Traffic, Mining and Military Areas) conferences, in the Journal of Environmental Quality (Kumar and Hundal, 2016), and in Soil Science (Shaw, 2015). Three books with a focus on urban soils have been published very recently, no- tably: Urban Soils—Advances in Soil Science (Rattan and Stewart, 2017), Anthropogenic Soils (Howard, 2017), and Soils Within Cities: Global Approaches to Their Sustainable Management — Composition, Properties, and Functions of Soils of the Urban Envi- ronment (Levin et al., 2017). Thanks to Prof. Wolfgang Burghardt, University of Duisburg- Essen, SUITMA was established in 1998 (Burghardt et al., 2015). SUITMA is a Working Group of the IUSS (International Union of Soil Sciences), under the roof of Division III—Soil Use and Man- agement. This division has taken a leading role in coordinating inter- national efforts to advance our understanding of the urban-soil system (Morel and Heinrich, 2008). In addition to the IUSS world congress, the SUITMA conferences are the largest gathering of sci- entists in the world in the field of urban soils. It meets every 2 years, rotating among major cities around the world. The first SUITMA conference was held in Essen, Germany, in 2000. The next (10th) SUITMA conference will be in Seoul, Korea, in June 2019. The ninth SUITMA Conference was held in Moscow, Russia, in May 2017. The theme of the conference was “Urbanization: A Challenge and an Opportunity for Soil Functions and Ecosystem Services.” SUITMA 9 was attended by more than 200 scientists, with 91 oral presentations and more than 100 poster presentations. Collections of articles were published in the Journal of Soils and Sediments, the European Journal of Soil Sciences, Soil Science, and as conference proceedings. Russia is known to be the cradle of modern soil sciences, led by the pioneering work of Vasily Dokuchaev (1846–1903). The Russian journal, Pochvovedenie (today a Russian version of the Eurasian Soil Science journal), which started publication in 1899, was the first journal in the field of soil science anywhere in the world (Moon and Landa, 2017). The founding editor of Soil Science, Jacob Goodale Lipman, served as an important bridge between soil scientists in the United States and the Russian Empire and, after 1917, the Soviet Union (Moon and Landa, 2017). In a similar fashion, this special issue of Soil Science, which features articles presented at the SUITMA 9 conference, is an oppor- tunity to introduce the work of scientists from other countries (espe- cially Russia) to readers in the United States and to promote international collaboration and communication. This is also an op- portunity for Soil Science to take the lead on publications in urban soil science and related fields. This special issue includes five articles that address various as- pects of urban soils. Scharenbroch et al. (2018) presented results on longitudinal soil developmental (pedogenic) processes occur- ring in engineered urban soils in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Paltseva et al. (2018) evaluated the bioaccessibility of Pb in 49 urban soil samples with a standard method from the US Environmental Protection Agency and a modified method and de- termined soil characteristics that control the bioaccessibility. Slukovskaya et al. (2018) explored the feasibility of using serpen- tine mining wastes to rehabilitate Cu-Ni–polluted wastelands in Arctic regions. 1 Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York, USA. 2 Department of Landscape Design and Sustainable Ecosystems, RUDN University, Moscow, Russia. 3 Department of Biology, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, New York, USA. 4 Department of Environmental Horticulture, University of Seoul, Seoul, Republic of Korea. 5 USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service, Somerset, New Jersey, USA. Address for correspondence: Dr. Zhongqi Cheng, Brooklyn College, 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, 11210, USA. E-mail: zcheng@brooklyn.cuny.edu Financial Disclosures/Conflicts of Interest: None reported. Received December 17, 2018. Accepted for publication December 20, 2018. Copyright © 2019 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 0038-075X DOI: 10.1097/SS.0000000000000241 EDITORIAL Soil Science • July/August 2018 • Volume 183 • Number 4 www.soilsci.com 121 Copyright © 2019 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.