Prioritising Soil Quality Assessment Through the Screening of Sites: The Use of Publicly Collected Data

Abstract

Emergence of policies dealing with concern over soil degradation and anthropogenic impacts to soil is likely to increase the requirement for assessment of soil quality and identification of soils at risk from degradation. An example is the proposed EU Soil Framework Directive, which features the identification of areas requiring protection from soil degradation. There have been some serious objections to such requirements on the grounds of resource and capital demands. To help to address these concerns, this work proposes a strategic set of indicators based on measured soil quality indicators. These can be used in screening locations to assess the likelihood of degradation and indicate areas for further detailed assessment. This will allow further emphasis to be placed on a smaller number of locations, which could lead to cost and resource efficiencies. Indicators have been used in the past in assessment of soil quality; they are parameters which can be measured and correspond to assessment criteria to measure and help monitor the status and changes. The study reviews the current state of soil quality assessment including methods and indicators that are used to collect data and approaches used to assess data to determine areas subject to soil degradation. Methods and practicalities for data collection and screening are discussed, including the need for further pilot testing and protocol development. Use of public data collection could allow more resource efficient protection of soils, in addition to benefits of public engagement, and raising awareness of the importance of soils and soil biodiversity. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Effects of spent mushroom compost application on the physicochemical properties of a degraded soil

“…Physical and chemical properties are the main indicators used to assess soil quality (Bone et al, 2014;Paz-Ferreiro and Fu, 2013;Pulido Moncada et al, 2015). Soil quality can be threatened by the increase in human activities such as urbanization and intensive agricultural activities (Paz-Ferreiro and Fu, 2013).…”

Ecology, Soils, and the Left

“…There is already enough knowledge about human impact on soils (primarily through case studies) that one need not wait until a thorough global database is available before dealing with the problem, by which time it would be too late. Complaints about the costs of and resistance to monitoring and conservation policy implementation need to be considered in a context of class struggles, rather than taken at face value (Bone et al 2012), and any prospect of monitoring from below, as promising as it can be for democratizing scientific knowledge production, must be carefully weighed against the possibility of its degeneration into an often gendered and racialized socialization of damage resulting from environmental impacts associated with profits for the few (e.g., Carney 1991;Schroeder 1999). …”

“…Many indicators are used to evaluate the state of soils and they can be quantified and combined to calculate an index of soil quality (see Bone et al 2012 for a thorough review). The parameters often regarded as of primary significance are divided according to the main soil properties (biological, physical, and chemical).…”

Toward a global platform for linking soil biodiversity data

“…Reference values can be an important tool for determining the success of ecosystem restoration and comparing data across time scales (Frouz et al, 2004;Kardol and Wardle, 2010) and for detecting subtle trends in temporal soil biodiversity assessments (Bardgett, 2005). Specific indicators that can be accessed from a global platform, such as disease-suppression (Mendes et al, 2011) and nutrient retention capacity of soil (De Vries et al, 2013), can also be used by land managers in order to calibrate and further improve sustainability of production methods, or used to develop rapid and economic soil biodiversity assessment tools for use by policy makers and end users (Wall et al, 2012;Bone et al, 2014). As demonstrated by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and other global data synthesis efforts (Otegui et al, 2013), access and availability of data has helped to predict the impact of climate change (Warren et al, 2013), monitor invasive species (Gatto et al, 2013) and inform on issues like human health (Daszak et al, 2013) and food and farming (Vincent et al, 2013).…”