For thousands of years, humans have prepared to plant by tilling, overturning the soil to manage moisture, airflow and nutrients. But modern agriculture’s deep plowing and heavy machinery do more harm than good, by disrupting the natural pathways through which water infiltrates, researchers report March 19 in Science. Breaking down that network isn’t just counterproductive to growing crops, the team says: It also makes the soil less resilient to flooding and drought.
To peer belowground, geophysicist Qibin Shi of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and colleagues fashioned a dense array of seismic sensors out of fiber-optic cables. Fiber-optic cables aren’t just for high-speed internet; they are powerful