Jaume Bech i Borràs: “Without soil, the Earthʼs surface would be like the moonʼs”

Graduated in Geology (Etraordinary Degree Award), Biology and Pharmacy at the UB -with a doctorate in Biology and Pharmacy- Jaume Bech finished his studies in the National Institute of Higher Education in Agricultural Sciences, Montpellier (ENSA) and the National Institute of Agricultural Sciences of Paris-Grignon (INA). Thanks to the mastership he gained abroad on micromorphology and soil cartography -studying Languedoc, Rhone Aveyron Valley and Auvergne, under the guidance of Servat, Legros, Fedoroff, Segalen, Ruellan, Millot, Quantin and other experts- Bech opened up a new chapter in soil sciences when research in Catalonia was going through a difficult time. With geological equipment and with a great scientific vocation -“my father turned me into a lover of geology, fossils and minerals”- he studied soil in the Mediterranean climate and tropical areas, the Siberian taiga, mountain ranges -Pyrenees, the Carpathian Mountains, the Andes- and desserts -Atacama (Chile) and Sechura (Peru)-,as well as close and faraway areas affected by toxic waste.

The UB Professor -whose name was used to name the bivalve fossil Ceratomya bechi (Calzada)- stands out in many issue covers such as Assessment, Restoration and Reclamation of Mining Influenced Soils (Academic Press, 2017), and PHEs Environment and Human Health (Springer, 2014). He has published more than 500 articles and contributions to conferences, has supervised twenty-one doctoral theses, ten dissertations and sixteen final degree projects on Agricultural Engineering.

Bechʼs scientific merits are distinguished by institutions such as The New York Academy of Sciences, the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona, the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Catalonia, the Royal Academy of Pharmacy of Catalonia, the Royal Academy of Veterinary Sciences of Catalonia. He is Honorary Member of the Edaphology Societies in Azerbaitjan, Bulgaria, Ecuador, Georgia, Romania and Russia, and correspondent member in Greece. France honoured him as Official of the Order of Academic Palms. He is Honorary Doctorate in ten universities in Spain, Ecuador, Chile, Peru, Bulgaria and Georgia. In Russia, the cradle of Edaphology and Geochemistry, the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytic Chemistry honoured him with the Kovalsky Medal.

The word ʻEdaphologyʼ comes from the Greek term ἔδαφος —Earthʼs surface- and according to some experts, a science that studies the most forgotten compound in all natural ecosystems.

In a wide sense, edaphology, soil science and pedology could be synonyms. In Spanish, the term ʻedaphologyʼ was adopted by the Catalan geographer Emilio Huguet del Villar, one of the founders of soil science in Spain. It is a complex science that studies soil depending on its structure, composition, evolution, etc. The idea that soil is just a mix of silt, clay and sand is not true: soil has a structure, porosity, mineral and organic compounds and living beings, water and air. The pedosphere is an inter-layer connecting the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and biosphere. All biogeochemical cycles -coal, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur- go through the soil, and if this edaphic film is lacking, the flux of the elements in ecosystems would break. Without soil, the Earthʼs surface would be like the moonʼs. This means we have to keep and preserve the quality of soil so that life continues in our planet. We cannot forget that until the 19th century, people did not understand this role in the mentioned cycles. Now we even know about their role in the problems of climate change.

When you were studying at the University of Barcelona, some of your teachers were Ramon Margalef, Carmina Virgili, Oriol de Bolòs, Lluís Solé-Sabarís, Arturo Caballero, Ramon Bataller, Rafael Candel Vila… How do you remember those times?

It was a complicated moment in history. University was undergoing a moment of change, the situation was precarious, without economic resources, examinations in Madrid, official oath of our positions… I got my doctorate at the UB, and I had to work on an own scientific instrument to finish my thesis -two years of work to make an automatic percolator, the first original one in the country- to work with the environmental conditions of our environment, unlike those instruments in France. In the Faculty of Pharmacy, I worked on a nitrogen analytics system and a calcimeter to measure carbonate. At that moment -from 1940 to 1975- we worked with many difficulties while science had a lot of more resources in Madrid…

As a student, I remember specially Professor Carmina Virgili. She was different, generous, restless, committed to teaching, research and young students. A clear eminence, she asked a lot of things, she talked to students. We carried out our practices with her, from Ports de Tossa to Montseny, when she was preparing her doctoral dissertation -el Triàsic dels Catalànids- and she couldnʼt stop asking us questions. “What are these red lines in contact with rocks from the Paleozoic?”, those were paleosoils, very old materials from million years ago, and those findings inspired us a lot.

With Professor Ramon Margalef, the topic of debate was phosphorous. He was a wise man, modest, accessible; his explanations were hard to follow -like Professor Oriol de Bolòs- but a great scientist. When we met at the café at the Faculty of Biology and he used to say “Listen, Jaume, where does the marine environment phosphor from soils and sediments come?”. Edaphology wasnʼt a popular field to study in our peninsula. I remember the project I worked on in the first map of soils in Delta del Llobregat, in 1970. It was a project from of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area to help determine the different qualities and potential functionalities of soils in this area. When I pointed the location of the best soil for the crops in Delta, the engineer in charge -Albert Serratosa- said, “Jaume, this has to be a bus station!”

Nowadays, there are still many surprising facts about soil properties. But there were healing remedies -such as terra lemnia or sigillata- to treat diseases in times of Hippocrates, Dioscorides, or Galen...

True, the same nature brings us a healing and natural alternative through soil properties. Some talk about medicinal geology, but I donʼt like this concept, I prefer to talk about geomedicine. Even animals throw themselves on the mud to kill or deactivate parasites that are absorbed by clay. In some countries and primitive cultures, the peoples eat clay when thereʼs hunger, and that is geophagy. But the healing function of soil compounds, which comes from ancient times, is kept if the ground keeps its good quality. Soil has resilience, but the ability to address the aggressions of affecting pollutants has a limit. The problem is the dose, like Doctor Paracels said.

We cannot forget that soils are big accumulators, transformers and transmitters of chemical compounds. Actually, I chose studies on pollutants that affect soil quality after a conference on paleosoils in Amsterdam in 1970. We got to a place in Limburg where cows got sick after eating fodder. Farmers were desperate; they didnʼt know the cause of this problem. We saw there were small humps on the side…and Eureka!. The reason of that intoxication -and even the death- of animals was there: old coal depots, full of toxic metals, which polluted the surrounding pastures.

I also saw how the water from natural wells in some areas of Romania -water which is rich in nitrosamine, toxics from nitrates- caused baby deaths. In some mining towns in Ecuador and Peru, I proved the existence of sick livestock -“they just get sick”, people said- due having drunk drainage water from the mines.

I remember the first person affected by goitre in Catalonia, and it is hard to forget. With time, I could find the relation between the geographical incidence of goitre in different areas of the country and the alterations in the fixing process of the soil acid humus. I presented the hypotheses based on my observations in 1978, in the conference LʼEdafogeomedicina, nou aspecte de la Sanitat Ambiental: aplicació al cas del goll endemic. Many years later, a scientific team from Taiwan could prove my hypothesis in an experimental study.

2015 was declared the International Year of Soils, the UN warned about 33 % of terrestrial surface being already degraded. Is the fight against soil pollution one of the priorities in the global agenda.

The world went from rural peoples to big cities, and this means covering soils, fertilize too much and put pesticides and pollutants. Soils can keep their purity but nature is limited, therefore all European and international initiatives to protect soils are important. We are finding more and more polluted areas in the planet, and still there are some quality soils. In South America, I have seen two and three-meters depth soils -which cannot be seen here- that were created thanks to other environmental conditions and a minimum agricultural holding. However, the European continent, in general, has thin soils -areas that are exploited by agriculture before the Roman Period- and you find the source rock in no time. But you can also find leafy forests with thick layers of plant litter on the ground, be careful then! This can be a warning sign telling us that the decomposition of fresh organic matter and creation of humus is blocked! Why? Probably due some pollutant.

However, not all pollution comes from humans. Near the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile, many river waters are naturally polluted by arsenic. This happens in other areas of the planet, like Bangladesh. Therefore, it is important to know each kind of soil and its traits. In Ecuador, I have seen places that were completely damaged -they looked like they had been bombed- because they were built on vertisoil, which is rich in expansible clay. We are not talking about pollution but a wrong management since a lack of a proper drain network can favour water filtrations to hydrate the clay. This can bring disasters! And this happens because they did not think of that soil with delicate properties. If you know that, you can use containment networks, but if you donʼt know…!

Soil degradation and pollution problems have to be diagnosed and need a solution. Sometimes you know the problem and the solution and you find particular answers. “Sir, there is no problem. We will do it our way”, I heard an ʻauthorityʼ say during the closing event for a course on soil pollution and decontamination I was giving in South America.

Nature also gives answers to environmental pollution. For example, metallophyte plants, which can withdraw metals from the terrestrial environment. Is phytoremediation is an efficient technique to decontaminate soils?

Some plants are useful to recover pollutant soils for mining activities. This is phytoremediation, that is, using metallophyte plants which accumulate metals naturally, like the ones I discovered in Ecuador and Peru. That is a cheap method that can be applied in soils that are polluted by lead, cadmium, arsenic, and zinc, but itʼs not always useful if the environmental impact is severe. This problem is affecting many countries in South America, which have large mines. Look, one day I was studying the impact of arsenic ground and heavy metals in the Tourmaline mine, in the district of Canchaque, in the Andes. I was collecting samples of native soil and plants when, suddenly, a collaborator started shouting “Professor, letʼs go!”. I didnʼt understand anything until I saw Sendero Luminoso were coming down from the mountain! Since not long ago the guerrilla had killed people nearby, we took everything and left. And it is interesting: with the few samples we took, we published a scientific article in 1997, which is the most cited one in my scientific bibliography!

Nowadays itʼs impossible to put barriers to many pollutants. Chemical products go further than country frontiers: this is the problem with diffuse pollution. In northern Catalonia, for instance, there arenʼt large industrial pollutant factories but the wind brings us toxics from other factories in other areas. Another paradigmatic example was the explosion of the nuclear power station in Chernobyl (Ukraine), in which the dispersal of radioactive elements polluted soils and water in many European nations. By the way, now Trump is supporting the coal mine industry, which is highly pollutant!

Doing research, teaching, promoting vocations. Do researchers still need to work on the social projection of the scientist?

I never despised carrying out activities for the general public. Scientists cannot leave their social role aside, this is relevant and has a big training value, mostly for youngsters. When I was studying the course on Chemistry, in 1953, professor Kubiena entered the room and showed us some slides. Those were images on soil micromorphology, I was seventeen and I have not forgot about them because these are things you live when you are young. Scientists have to give in order to get something back, and create vocations. They cannot rest in their office, they have to be open and generous, like Dr. Virgili. I participated in guided trips, conferences, and dedicated time to publish works in the Catalan Society of Natural History, in Scholar Meetings of Diputació de Barcelona, publications in Reboll -the newsletter for the Center of Natural History of Conca de Barberà, and dissemination books which were edited by CIRIT in the program Trobada amb la Ciència to promote scientific vocations among young people.

Science is linked to a high level of specialization, a content compartment so that knowledge flows. Are these the identity signs of science in the 21st century?

Personally, science is getting more and more transverse. This can turn into a dispersion of the study core, the soul of the matter, like some say. Therefore, we need to find a balance so as not to forget about the basic knowledge of science, and then associate them with disciplines such as biology, geology, medicine, etc. Otherwise, there is a risk of getting some hints of shallow knowledge. If you want to focus on research, it is essential for you to like science, to be patient and be constant. This is the message I would like to share with the youngsters that will be future generations of researchers. Let me add that it wouldn't be fair to end this interview without thanking my beloved wife Joana for the sacrifice regarding the many hours I take from her and the family, and her courage, criteria and scientific knowledge have been crucial in my university life, including our daily life.