Understanding Soil Connectivity: A Conceptual Framework for the Sociological Dimension of Soil Security

Connectivity is the sociological dimension of the Soil Security framework, linking people, communities, institutions, knowledge systems, and landscapes to soil. While capacity, condition, capital, and codification describe soil's biophysical, economic, and governance characteristics, connectivity explains how societies understand, value, steward, and protect this critical resource. Yet it remains comparatively underdeveloped within Soil Security literature. Using an interpretive conceptual synthesis of Soil Security and adjacent literatures, this paper develops a framework for soil connectivity and proposes an explicit hierarchical taxonomy of its principal subdomains. We identify Soil Awareness and Two-Eyed Soil Seeing as the twin foundations of connectivity. Soil Awareness captures society's recognition of soil's importance for life, ecosystems, and human wellbeing, while Two-Eyed Soil Seeing recognises the complementary strengths of Indigenous and local knowledge systems and scientific soil knowledge. Building on these foundations, we organise connectivity into five interconnected domains: Cognitive Connectivity, Relational Connectivity, Knowledge Connectivity, Institutional Connectivity, and Stewardship Connectivity. The framework emphasises soil memory, soil heritage, Indigenous and local knowledge, and intergenerational stewardship as mechanisms linking past, present, and future soil management. We further propose a taxonomy and dendrogram that clarify relationships among subdomains and support future assessment, monitoring, and operationalisation. A retrospective application to a published ethnopedological Soil Security assessment illustrates how the framework may be used to interpret local knowledge, participation, institutions, and stewardship, while also identifying areas requiring further evidence. Overall, the framework shows how awareness and ways of knowing generate understanding, how understanding fosters relationships and stewardship, and how these relationships become embedded in institutions, governance, and collective action. By structuring the sociological dimension of Soil Security, this paper offers a foundation for strengthening soil stewardship across cultural, institutional, and geographical contexts, and for guiding more inclusive soil policy, education, assessment, dialogue, and practice globally.