1 Soil protection in Europe Luca Montanarella

2 Bruxelles, le COM(2002) 179 final COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS Towards a Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection

3 Soil Policy Development Organisational Set-up Advisory Forum Chair DG ENV Stakeholders meetings Chair DG ENV TWG 1 Monitoring Germany/JRC Co-chair UK TWG 2 Erosion Spain/Belgium Co-chair EEB TWG 3 Organic matter France Co-chair IUSS/FEAD TWG 4 Contamination Austria/NL Co-chair EEA ISWG = Interservice Working Group TWG = Technical Working Group Commission ISWG Chair DG ENV Technical co-ordination group and secretariat Chair DG ENV TWG5 Research W. Blum/ RTD Co-chair ELO

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5 Food and other biomass production –Agriculture Storage, filtering, and transformation –Water protection Habitat and gene pool –Nature protection Physical and cultural environment for mankind –Archeology and cultural heritage Source of raw materials –Peat, Sand, Clay,etc…. Main functions of soils:

6 Threats to soil as identified in COM(2002) 179 Erosion Decline in organic matter Soil contamination Soil sealing Soil compaction Decline in soil biodiversity Salinisation Floods and landslides

7 The Pan-European Soil Erosion Risk Assessment - PESERA - is a process-based and spatially distributed model to quantify soil erosion by water and assess its risk across Europe PESERA Soil Erosion Risk Assessment

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9 Aggregated results

10 National Soil Erosion Risk Assessments

11 Validation of results

12 Observed sediment export Sediment volume t/ha/year Erosion Amount of sediment SDR = Total volume of erosion Sediment delivery Predicted sediment export Reservoir Basin Predicted soil erosion t/ha/year

13 Validation of research - building confidence Central Belgium (Verstraeten and Poesen, K.U.Leuven) Czech Republic (Dostal et al., CVUT Prague) Spain (Avendano Salas et al., Devente, Poesen and Verstraeten) Italy (Bazzoffi et al., ISSDS, Firenze)

14 US-NRCS National Resources Inventory

points systematically sampled linear: rills, gullies accumulation

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17 European land cover CORINE + USGS Eurasia Avg Annual Temp Global Historical Clim Network Soil DB 1:1M Pedo transfer rules (van Ranst, 1995) Model Spatial processing at 1km resolution soil type texture Topsoil Organic Carbon Content (30cm)

18 Organic carbon content (%) in the surface horizon (0-30 cm) of soils National Soil Organic Carbon stocks (0-30cm) in Gt Model outputAggregated results Topsoil Organic Carbon Content (30cm)

19 Global soil protection policies: Synergies between the 3 Rio Conventions

20 Stocks of C in soils (0-0.3 m) in France - Arrouays et al. (2002) 3,1 Pg OC content in topsoils (0-0.3 m) in France - European Soil Database 5,0 Pg

21 Change in organic matter content by commune, in Brittany, between and [M. Robert, pers. comm.]

22 Soil carbon Initial cultivation C<0 C 0 C>0 Effect on atmospheric CO 2 ~ Management change Agricultural land Emission Sequestration time Natural land increase decrease

23 %OC FYM FYM since 1885 FYM since 1968 NPK No fertilisers or manures FYM applied at 35 t ha -1 yr -1 Goulding Monitoring SOM at Rothamsted Declining soil organic matter

24 The effect of tillage on carbon stocks of arable soils (After Arrouays et al., 2002)

25 Member States JRC EEA Streamlining the flow of policy relevant soil information in Europe Reporting policy relevant soil data aggregated by administrative units ACCESS HARMONISATIONREPORTING Georeferenced Soil Database for Europe Soil Mapping Unit (Soilscape) Normalised Statistical Unit