1Sofia 2005

Luca Montanarella

Towards the EU Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection

2Sofia 2005

Policies for a Sustainable Use of the Soil Resource

• National – USA, Germany, United Kingdom, etc….

• Trans-national (regional)– EU Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection,

Alpine Convention, Euro-Mediterranean Partnership

• Global– MEA’s: UNFCCC, CBD, UNCCD

3Sofia 2005

US Soil Conservation Act 1935

The ‘Dust bowl’

4Sofia 2005

US Soil Conservation Act 1935

• Recognition of the problem• Establishment of the US Soil Conservation

Service• Participatory approach with strong local

partnership (Soil Conservation Districts)• Establishment of technical guidelines• Implementation of soil conservation

measures• Monitoring of results

5Sofia 2005

NRCS National Resources Inventory

6Sofia 2005

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/soil/index.htm

7Sofia 2005

• 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:

8Sofia 2005

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

9Sofia 2005

Council June 2002

EESC September 2002

CoR February 2003

EP May 2003

Opinions of EU Institutions

10Sofia 2005

Participatory approach

Soil mailbox: env-soil@cec.eu.int

Soil internet site: http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/

policies: Soil

Soil electronic library and discussion site: CIRCA (june 03)

11Sofia 2005

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

12Sofia 2005

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

13Sofia 2005

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

14Sofia 2005

PESERA Soil Erosion Risk Assessment

15Sofia 2005 Aggregated results

16Sofia 2005

National reports

17Sofia 2005

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

18Sofia 2005

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

19Sofia 2005

Develop regionalized approaches for risk assessment

20Sofia 2005

21Sofia 2005

Global soil protection policies:Synergies between the 3 Rio Conventions

SOIL PROTECTION

UNCCDCBD

22Sofia 2005

M. Robert, 2004

23Sofia 2005

24Sofia 2005

European Soil Database: WRB classification

http://eusoils.jrc.it

25Sofia 2005

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)

26Sofia 2005

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)

27Sofia 2005

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

28Sofia 2005

Soil

carb

on

Initialcultivation

C<0 C 0 C>0

Effect onatmospheric

CO2

~

Managementchange

Agricultural land

Emission Sequestration

time

Natural land

increase decrease

We need to detect changes over time: Monitoring!

29Sofia 2005

%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

30Sofia 2005

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

31Sofia 2005

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

32Sofia 2005

The way forward

• Improve our policy relevant soil information.

• Delineate areas at risk of soil degradation by the various threats.

• Implement existing legislation and MEA’s.

• Monitor the impact of existing legislation on soil protection.

• Develop (if necessary) specific legislative instruments for soil protection.