Soil biodiversity data: Actual and potential use in European and national legislation

Römbke, Jörg; Gardi, Ciro; Creamer, Rachel; Miko, Ladislav

doi:10.1016/j.apsoil.2015.07.003

Cited by 17 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 44 publications

(40 reference statements)

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“…Data collection should consider local variation in biological functioning as affected by factors such as pedoclimatic zone and land use [88] . Also, data availability might contribute to improved predictive power of models that simulate soil processes [120] and facilitate the link between soil properties and soil functions such as habitat provision, soil structure formation and maintenance, and nutrient cycling [121] . Finally, whereas the indicators used in visual soil quality assessment have the benefit of being easily understandable, translation of analytical soil quality indicators values to meaning for farmers and other land managers often has to be mediated by scientists, extension service advisors and/ or computer algorithms.…”

Section: Feasibility Of the Application Of The Novel Soil Quality Indmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel soil quality indicators for the evaluation of agricultural management practices: a biological perspective

Bongiorno¹

2020

Front. Agr. Sci. Eng.

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Developments in soil biology and in methods to characterize soil organic carbon can potentially deliver novel soil quality indicators that can help identify management practices able to sustain soil productivity and environmental resilience. This work aimed at synthesizing results regarding the suitability of a range of soil biological and biochemical properties as novel soil quality indicators for agricultural management. The soil properties, selected through a published literature review, comprised different labile organic carbon fractions [hydrophilic dissolved organic carbon, dissolved organic carbon, permanganate oxidizable carbon (POXC), hot water extractable carbon and particulate organic matter carbon], soil disease suppressiveness measured using a Pythium-Lepidium bioassay, nematode communities characterized by amplicon sequencing and qPCR, and microbial community level physiological profiling measured with MicroResp TM. Prior studies tested the sensitivity of each of the novel indicators to tillage and organic matter addition in ten European long-term field experiments (LTEs) and assessed their relationships with pre-existing soil quality indicators of soil functioning. Here, the results of these previous studies are brought together and interpreted relative to each other and to the broader body of literature on soil quality assessment. Reduced tillage increased carbon availability, disease suppressiveness, nematode richness and diversity, the stability and maturity of the food web, and microbial activity and functional diversity. Organic matter addition played a weaker role in enhancing soil quality, possibly due to the range of composition of the organic matter inputs used in the LTEs. POXC was the indicator that discriminated best between soil management practices, followed by nematode indices based on functional characteristics. Structural equation modeling shows that POXC has a central role in nutrient retention/supply, carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, erosion control and disease regulation/suppression. The novel indicators proposed here have great potential to improve existing soil quality assessment schemes. Their feasibility of application is discussed and needs for future research are outlined.

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Section: Feasibility Of the Application Of The Novel Soil Quality Indmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel soil quality indicators for the evaluation of agricultural management practices: a biological perspective

Bongiorno¹

2020

Front. Agr. Sci. Eng.

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“…agropec. bras., Brasília, v.55, e01006, 2020 DOI: 10.1590/S1678-3921.pab2020.v55.01006 nation-wide monitoring programs in place, but both public and scientific interest in the state of the soil organism community, mainly of earthworms, are growing notably in France, the Netherlands, and Germany (Jeffery et al, 2010;Cluzeau et al, 2012;Römbke et al, 2016). In Brazil, the use of earthworm communities as bioindicators has been explored in several publications (Nunes et al, 2007;Uzêda et al, 2007;Andréa, 2010;Bartz et al, 2010;Fernandes et al, 2010;Lima & Brussaard, 2010;Marichal et al, 2010;Rousseau et al, 2010); however, up to now, only one earthworm-based soil quality classification has been proposed, considering the density of these invertebrates in areas under no-tillage in the western region of the state of Paraná, Southern Brazil (Bartz et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recommendations for assessing earthworm populations in Brazilian ecosystems

Nadolny

Santos

Demetrio

et al. 2020

Pesq. agropec. bras.

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Earthworms are often related to fertile soils and are also frequently used as environmental quality indicators. However, to optimize their use as bioindicators, earthworm populations must be evaluated together with the environmental and anthropogenic variables regulating their communities. This review sought to identify the earthworm-sampling, soil chemical and physical, and environmental and anthropogenic attributes evaluated in 124 published studies that quantified earthworm abundance (>7,300 samples) in 765 sites with different types of climate, soils, land use, and management systems in Brazil. Soil chemical and physical attributes (except pH) were less reported (≤50% of studies) than other environmental variables such as sampling date, altitude, temperature, precipitation, climate and soil type, and land use (>50% of studies). Earthworms were rarely identified (24%) and few studies (31%) measured their biomass, although most provided adequate information on sampling protocol. Based on their importance in regulating earthworm populations, a set of variables is proposed to be evaluated when studying earthworm communities and other macrofauna groups. This should help guide future studies on earthworms in Brazil and other countries, optimize data collection and replicability, allow comparisons between different studies, and promote the use of earthworms as soil quality bioindicators.

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“…For land use planning at local and regional scales, research has identified many ‘indicator taxa’ but few are actually used [3] and these usually represent conspicuous organisms of direct human value, such as trees, game animals, or wild berries [4]. Even in Europe, that has long biodiversity research traditions, some major functionally important groups remain almost ignored (e.g., soil organisms) [5], and the distribution, trends, and key pressures on uncommon taxa and full species diversity are only fragmentarily known [6]. In terms of management, monitoring of threatened species remains the clearest gap in addressing, for example, sustainability of forest management [7] or conservation of otherwise well-known taxon groups [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A simple survey protocol for assessing terrestrial biodiversity in a broad range of ecosystems

Lõhmus

Runnel

2018

PLoS ONE

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Finding standard cost-effective methods for monitoring biodiversity is challenging due to trade-offs between survey costs (including expertise), specificity, and range of applicability. These trade-offs cause a lack of comparability among datasets collected by ecologists and conservationists, which is most regrettable in taxonomically demanding work on megadiverse inconspicuous taxon groups. We have developed a site-scale survey method for diverse sessile land organisms, which can be analyzed over multiple scales and linked with ecological insights and management. The core idea is that field experts can effectively allocate observation effort when the time, area, and priority sequence of tasks are fixed. We present the protocol, explain its specifications (taxon group; expert qualification; plot size; effort) and applications based on >800 original surveys of four taxon groups; and we analyze its effectiveness using data on polypores in hemiboreal and tropical forests. We demonstrate consistent effort-species richness curves and among-survey variation in contrasting ecosystems, and high effectiveness compared with casual observations both at local and regional scales. Bias related to observer experience appeared negligible compared with typical assemblage variation. Being flexible in terms of sampling design, the method has enabled us to compile data from various projects to assess conservation status and habitat requirements of most species (specifically rarities and including discovery of new species); also, when linked with site descriptions, to complete environmental assessments and select indicator species for management. We conclude that simple rules can significantly improve expert-based biodiversity surveys. Ideally, define (i) a common plot size that addresses multiple taxon groups and management goals; (ii) taxon groups based on field expertise and feasible number of species; (iii) sufficient and practical search time; (iv) a procedure for recording within-plot heterogeneity. Such a framework, combined with freedom to allocate effort on-site, helps utilizing full expertise of observers without losing technical rigor.

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Soil biodiversity data: Actual and potential use in European and national legislation

Cited by 17 publications

References 44 publications

Novel soil quality indicators for the evaluation of agricultural management practices: a biological perspective

Novel soil quality indicators for the evaluation of agricultural management practices: a biological perspective

Recommendations for assessing earthworm populations in Brazilian ecosystems

A simple survey protocol for assessing terrestrial biodiversity in a broad range of ecosystems

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