Not all sealed soils recover alike: Pedogenic and technogenic controls on post-de-sealing recovery

Soil sealing is a major and often persistent form of soil degradation, yet removal of an impervious cover does not automatically restore the soil beneath it. Direct evidence of post-de-sealing trajectories remains sparse and heterogeneous, and a pedologically explicit framework linking residual soil-body properties and technogenic legacies to function-specific recovery expectations remains lacking. This review synthesises direct observations from de-sealed sites separately from mechanistic evidence on profile integrity, compaction, pore architecture, mineralogy, organic matter, exchange processes, phosphorus sorption, salinity, sodicity, hydromorphy and Technosols. The evidence supports a framework in which recovery reflects the interaction between residual pedogenic properties and technogenic alteration. Direct studies with explicit follow-up span only 2-36 months and show that structural, hydraulic, nutrient-related, organic-matter and biological recovery domains can follow different trajectories; rapid improvement in infiltration, for example, does not demonstrate recovery of water storage or multifunctionality. World Reference Base diagnostics and qualifiers can provide mechanistic context, but Reference Soil Groups are not resilience classes. Soil Recovery Potential (SRP) is defined as a conditional, reference-based, time-dependent and function-specific prospective assessment and distinguish de-sealing from subsequent soil development, realised recovery from prospective recovery potential, and in-situ recovery from soil reconstruction. The central conclusion is that the recoverable soil body, rather than surface opening alone, determines the attainable recovery of target functions. In practice, SRP should inform de-sealing prioritisation together with contamination risk, local functional needs, technical feasibility and cost. Long-term comparative experiments across contrasting pedological settings are needed to validate recovery predictions and derive transferable response functions.