Soil multifunctionality: Synergies and trade‐offs across European climatic zones and land uses

Abstract

With increasing societal demands for food security and environmental sustainability on land, the question arises: to what extent do synergies and trade‐offs exist between soil functions and how can they be measured across Europe? To address this challenge, we followed the functional land management approach and assessed five soil functions: primary productivity, water regulation and purification, climate regulation, soil biodiversity and nutrient cycling. Soil, management and climate data were collected from 94 sites covering 13 countries, five climatic zones and two land‐use types (arable and grassland). This dataset was analysed using the Soil Navigator, a multicriteria decision support system developed to assess the supply of the five soil functions simultaneously. Most sites scored high for two to three soil functions, demonstrating that managing for multifunctionality in soil is possible but that local constraints and trade‐offs do exist. Nutrient cycling, biodiversity and climate regulation were less frequently delivered at high capacity than the other two soil functions. Using correlation and co‐occurrence analyses, we also found that synergies and trade‐offs between soil functions vary among climatic zones and land‐use types. This study provides a new framework for monitoring soil quality at the European scale where both the supply of soil functions and their interactions are considered.Highlights Managing and monitoring soil multifunctionality across Europe is possible. Synergies and trade‐offs between soil functions exist, making it difficult to maximize the supply of all five soil functions simultaneously. Synergies and trade‐offs between soil functions vary by climatic zone and land‐use type. Climate regulation, biodiversity and nutrient cycling are less frequently delivered at high capacity.

The Effects of Soil Improving Cropping Systems (SICS) on Soil Erosion and Soil Organic Carbon Stocks across Europe: A Simulation Study

“…For example, the Soil Navigator decision support system was developed to assess and optimise various soil functions [90] on farm scale, incorporating soil management strategies. This was applied to monitor multiple soil functions at 94 sites across 13 European countries [91]. Vrebos et al [92] analysed and mapped four soil functions on agricultural lands across the EU.…”

Cultivated Land Use Zoning Based on Soil Function Evaluation from the Perspective of Black Soil Protection

“…Therefore, soil organic carbon is input into all five function models. This creates interconnections between soil functions as observed in the field; however, the threshold values and decision rules used to assess the input attributes are unique for each model [65]. As several indicators use the same input variables, statistical correlations among indicators are expected.…”

Same soil, different climate: Crop model intercomparison on translocated lysimeters

“…The problem that models are often right for the wrong reason (Kirchner, 2006), when only a single criterion is considered in model calibration (Houska et al, 2021), is added here as a challenge to calibration. When the focus is on increasing food production (Hamidov et al, 2018), soil processes are often compromised although soil functions have important feedbacks on ecosystem productivity, nutrient cycling, energy, and water (Deckmyn et al, 2020;Zwetsloot et al, 2020). This emphasizes the need to better calibrate the soil part in crop models beyond a limited consideration of classical agronomic variables such as only GY, AgBio, LAI, HI, or plant nutrient uptake and instead including soil related observations with high temporal and if feasible spatial (depth) resolution (Kersebaum et al, 2015).…”