One of the goals of IIASA's Biosphere Project is to develop strategic frameworks showing the net impact of human activities on properties of the environment that are relevant for sustainable human development. The first contribution to this goal was the paper by Paul Crutzen and Thomas Graedel on "The role of atmospheric chemistry in environment -- development interactions", published in W.C. Clark and R.E. Munn, eds. (1986): Sustainable Development of the Biosphere (Cambridge University Press). 

In this paper the author begins the task of shaping a complementary framework for the land/soil system. The challenge is in many ways greater than that for the atmosphere, due to the extreme spatial heterogeneity of soil systems. This paper is especially useful as an effort to bridge the gap that normally separates the microscale of studies of soil dynamics from the macroscale surveys of soil state and classification.