Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.
Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences
Small-scale farming is an important component of local economies, globally. In rapidly growing regions, farmed plots of land remain as cities expand. To understand how urbanization impacts a critical nutrient for plant growth, phosphorus, Asabere and Sauer [2026] conducted a thorough survey of soil phosphorus pools along an urban to rural gradient surrounding Kumasi, Ghana.
Highly weathered tropical soils, such as those in Kumasi, are generally depleted in phosphorus. The authors find that soils with a long history of use in food production had higher phosphorus content overall, and a shift from phosphorus being predominantly in a difficult-to-absorb form (mineral-occluded) to a form that is more readily taken-up by plants (calcium-bound). The study proposes that urban waste in its various forms (broken bits of cement, charcoal and ash, wash-water, etc.) contribute to the accumulation of phosphorus and calcium in these soils over time. This work shines a light on understudied soils that play a critical role in regional economies and livelihoods.
Citation: Asabere, S. B., & Sauer, D. (2026). Oxide-occluded to calcium-bound: Urbanization increases soil phosphorus stocks and diversifies pools in a tropical West African agroecosystem. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 131, e2026JG009815. https://doi.org/10.1029/2026JG009815
—Kendalynn Morris, Associate Editor, JGR: Biogeosciences
Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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