Functional Land Management for managing soil functions: A case-study of the trade-off between primary productivity and carbon storage in response to the intervention of drainage systems in Ireland

Soil “Ecosystem” Services and Natural Capital: Critical Appraisal of Research on Uncertain Ground

“…Frontiers in Environmental Science | www.frontiersin.org(e.g., Kovda et al, 1990;Lavelle et al, 1995;Lavelle, 1996Lavelle, , 2000Karl, 1997;Schouten et al, 1997;Rampazzo et al, 1998;Yaalon and Arnold, 2000;Barancikova and Madaras, 2003;Calvet, 2003;Blume et al, 2010Blume et al, , 2016Buchan, 2010;Bujnovsky and Vilcek, 2012;Glenk et al, 2012;Madena et al, 2012;Morel et al, 2014;O'Sullivan et al, 2015). In particular, soil functions have become a cornerstone in the long-standing debate on the somewhat vague concepts of "soil quality" and "soil health, " various authors arguing for the existence of absolute values of the notions for any given soil, whereas a growing number of researchers consider that their evaluation makes sense only in relation to specific soil functions (e.g., Sojka and Upchurch, 1999;Bouma, 2002Bouma, , 2010Bouma, , 2014Nortcliff, 2002;Letey et al, 2003;Robert, 2005;Kibblewhite et al, 2008;Keller et al, 2012;Thomsen et al, 2012;Volchko et al, 2014).…”

“…In principle, the benefits and costs that the soil will lead to in the years ahead should be taken into account in any cost-benefit analysis, along with present-day values, but this automatically would make such an analysis unmanageable unless it were possible, so to speak, to set an "end date" after which functions/services do not need to be considered any more. This is achieved by progressively decreasing the estimated, present-day value of future benefits and costs, using a socalled "discounting rate" (e.g., Fromm and Bruggemann, 1999;Anderson et al, 2015;O'Sullivan et al, 2015). The higher the discounting rate, the shorter is the time during which we believe that a given function/service will be considered valuable by future generations.…”

Exploring Climate‐Smart Land Management for Atlantic Europe

“…The installation of drainage systems extends the grass growing and grazing season but is associated with losses of SOC as a result of oxidation. Using carbon pricing, O'Sullivan et al (2015) assessed the cost-benefit ratio between increased productivity and carbon losses for contrasting grassland soils. At current carbon prices (<€10 tonne −1 CO 2 e), the financial benefits from increased productivity outweighed the financial "penalties" arising from the associated increase in GHG emissions.…”

Land Use Analysis in Latvia in The Context of Sustainable Development

“…1. Nowadays, there is a growing demand for an increase in agricultural output, but also environmental targets are expected to strengthen in the agricultural industry (O'Sullivan et al, 2015). It also follows from the definition of land management: "Land Management is the set of measures of the land policy implementation, the objective of which is to promote the sustainable land use and protection" (Legislation of the Republic of Latvia, Land Management Law, 2014).…”