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Soil protection in Europe

Luca Montanarella

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Bruxelles, le 16.4.2002COM(2002) 179 final

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL, THEEUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND

THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS

Towards a Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection

http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/agriculture/soil_protection.htm

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Soil Policy Development Organisational Set-up

Advisory Forum Chair DG ENV

Stakeholders meetings

Chair DG ENV

TWG 1MonitoringGermany/JRC

Co-chair UK

TWG 2Erosion

Spain/BelgiumCo-chair EEB

TWG 3Organic matter

FranceCo-chair IUSS/FEAD

TWG 4Contamination

Austria/NLCo-chair EEA

ISWG = Interservice Working GroupTWG = Technical Working Group

Commission ISWG Chair DG ENV

Technical co-ordination group and secretariat Chair DG ENV

TWG5Research

W. Blum/ RTDCo-chair ELO

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http://eusoils.jrc.it/ESDB_Archive/eusoils_docs/

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• Food and other biomass production

– Agriculture

• Storage, filtering, and transformation

– Water protection

• Habitat and gene pool

– Nature protection

• Physical and cultural environment for mankind

– Archeology and cultural heritage

• Source of raw materials

– Peat, Sand, Clay,etc….

Main functions of soils:

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Threats to soil as identified in COM(2002) 179

• Erosion

• Decline in organic matter

• Soil contamination

• Soil sealing

• Soil compaction

• Decline in soil biodiversity

• Salinisation

• Floods and landslides

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The Pan-European Soil Erosion Risk Assessment - PESERA - is a process-based and spatially distributed model to quantify soil erosion by water and assess its risk across Europe

PESERA Soil Erosion Risk Assessment

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PESERA Soil Erosion Risk Assessment

9Aggregated results

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National Soil Erosion Risk Assessments

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Validation of results

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Observed sediment export

Sediment volume

t/ha/year

Erosion

Amount of sedimentSDR =

Total volume of erosion

Sediment delivery

Predicted sediment export

Reservoir

Basin

Predicted soil erosion

t/ha/year

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Validation of research - building confidence

Central Belgium (Verstraeten and Poesen,

K.U.Leuven)

Czech Republic (Dostal et al., CVUT Prague)

Spain (Avendano Salas et al., Devente, Poesen and Verstraeten) Italy (Bazzoffi et al., ISSDS,

Firenze)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

y = 0.4883x + 0.7188

R2 = 0.5445

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00

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US-NRCS National Resources Inventory

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100 000 points systematically sampled

linear: rills, gullies

accumulation

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European land coverCORINE + USGS Eurasia

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

Co

rre

ctio

n F

acto

r

0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000Temperature Range (AAAT deg. C)

Semi-natural Cultivated Avg. Ground Data Model

TEMPERATURE CORRECTION FOR OCCeofficient for temperature variation

(> 3 ground measurements)

Avg Annual Temp

Global Historical Clim Network

Soil DB 1:1M

Pedo transfer rules(van Ranst, 1995)

ModelSpatial processing at 1km resolution

soil typetexture ctfTEMP n

AAATcor cos*

Topsoil Organic Carbon Content (30cm)

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Organic Carbon (%) No Data 0 - 1 1 - 2 2 - 5 5 - 10 10 - 25 25 - 35 > 35

Organic carbon content (%) in the surface horizon (0-30 cm) of soils

Organic Carbon Gt 0.0 2.5 5.0 7.5 10.0 12.5 15.0

0.5 3.5

5.0

1.6 7.1

0.3

0.8 5.8

0.7

2.0

0.6

5.6

5.7

13.8 12.5

1.5

1.8

1.1

1.1 0.6

1.2 1.0 0.2

0.5 0.5 1.0

2.3

1.0

0.2 0.6

0.2

0.2

National Soil Organic Carbon stocks (0-30cm) in Gt

Model output Aggregated results

Topsoil Organic Carbon Content (30cm)

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Global soil protection policies:Synergies between the 3 Rio Conventions

SOIL ORGANIC CARBON

UNCCDCBD

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Stocks of C in soils (0-0.3 m) in France - Arrouays et al. (2002)

3,1 Pg

OC content in topsoils (0-0.3 m) in France - European Soil Database

Organic Carbon (%) No Data 0 - 1 1 - 2 2 - 5 5 - 10 10 - 25 25 - 35 > 35

5,0 Pg

21Change in organic matter content by commune, in Brittany, between 1980-85 and 1990-95 [M. Robert, pers. comm.]

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Soil

carb

on

Initialcultivation

C<0 C 0 C>0

Effect onatmospheric

CO2

~

Managementchange

Agricultural land

Emission Sequestration

time

Natural land

increase decrease

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%OC

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3FYM

FYM since 1885FYM since1968NPK

No fertilisers or manures

FYM applied at 35 t ha-1 yr-1 Goulding

Management/vegetation % C

Old pasture (8-18cm) 1.5Old woodland (13-18cm) 2.4

Broadbalk, after 50 yearscontinuous wheat, 1893

No manure since 1839 (0-23cm) 0.9

Complete minerals and 185kg

(NH4)2SO4 most years since 1843

1.1

14 tons of farmyard manureannually since 1843 (0-23cm)

2.2

Monitoring SOM at Rothamsted

Declining soil organic matter

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36

40

44

48

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0 25 50 75 100Années

Stoc

k C

(t/h

a)

Labour

Semis direct

Travail superficiel

Mesures Extrapolation

The effect of tillage on carbon stocks of arable soils (After Arrouays et al., 2002)

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Member States JRC EEAStreamlining the flow of policy relevant soil information in Europe

Reporting policy relevant soil data aggregated by administrative units

ACCESS HARMONISATION REPORTING

Georeferenced Soil Database for Europe

Soil Mapping Unit(Soilscape)

Normalised Statistical Unit