Targeting the soil quality and soil health concepts when aiming for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the EU Green Deal

Abstract

Abstract. The concepts of soil quality and soil health are widely used as soils receive more attention in the worldwide policy arena. So far, however, the distinction between the two concepts is unclear, and operational procedures for measurement are still being developed. A proposal is made to focus soil health on actual soil conditions, as determined by a limited set of indicators that reflect favourable rooting conditions. In addition, soil quality can express inherent soil conditions in a given soil type (genoform), reflecting the effects of past and present soil management (expressed by various phenoforms). Soils contribute to ecosystem services that, in turn, contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and, more recently, to the EU Green Deal. Relevant soil ecosystem services are biomass production (SDG 2 – zero hunger), providing clean water (SDG 6), climate mitigation by carbon capture and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (SDG 13 – climate action), and biodiversity preservation (SDG 15 – life on land). The use of simulation models for the soil–water–atmosphere–plant system is proposed as a quantitative and reproducible procedure to derive single values for soil health and soil quality for current and future climate conditions. Crop production parameters from the international yield gap programme are used in combination with soil-specific parameters expressing the effects of phenoforms. These procedures focus on the ecosystem service, namely biomass production. Other ecosystem services are determined by soil-specific management and are to be based on experiences obtained in similar soils elsewhere or by new research. A case study, covering three Italian soil series, illustrates the application of the proposed concepts, showing that soil types (soil series) acted significantly differently to the effects of management and also in terms of their reaction to climate change.

The soil crisis: the need to treat as a global health problem and the pivotal role of microbes in prophylaxis and therapy

“…One of the problems that soil health analysis faces is the paucity of unified criteria on quality parameters and their levels, together with highly fragmented information on the characteristics of soils in different regions, their fertility and their biological activity (e.g. see B€ unemann et al, 2018;Bonfante et al, 2020). In Europe, through the LUCAS program, important work is being done to harmonize the data, and represents the largest harmonized open-access data set for topsoil for the European Union, but the level of resolution needs to be improved and expanded (Orgiazzi et al, 2018).…”

Assessing the Role of Soils When Developing Sustainable Agricultural Production Systems Focused on Achieving the UN-SDGs and the EU Green Deal

“…Only simulation models can provide valuable exploratory data on future effects of climate change. So far, surprisingly few studies have been made focusing on soil and the effects of climate change [31][32][33].…”

Urban Vegetation Leveraging Actions

“…They are part of the UN Resolution popularly known as "Agenda 2030". Research directions on this topic include responses to climate change [22][23][24][25], social equity, education and health [26][27][28][29][30][31], urban sustainability [32][33][34][35], sustainable business [36][37][38][39][40] and policy design, implementation and evaluation [41][42][43][44][45]. It is widely understood that the SDGs are closely interdependent and that their successful pursuit requires integration across most policy areas.…”