Abstract
AbstractWith 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.
Highlights
Agricultural land provides a multitude of soil functions to society
Our findings show that soils can deliver multiple functions at high capacity but that local constraints and trade-offs between soil functions make it unrealistic to demand that soils should perform highly on each of the five soil functions assessed
Rather than a focus on maximizing all soil functions simultaneously, we argue that agrienvironmental policies and management actions should aim for optimizing soil multifunctionality
Summary
Agricultural land provides a multitude of soil functions to society. With an 80% probability that the world population will reach between 9.6 and 12.3 billion in 2100 (Gerland et al, 2014), the demand for global food security and associated pressure on soil to sustain the production of food, feed, fibre and fuel is rising (Lal, 2009). By means of Strategic Plans, the new CAP will allow for greater flexibility at the national and regional level so that Member States can work with farmers to select the most suitable measures for their land to achieve the EU objectives (European Commission, 2018) Considering this enhanced focus on soil in the future framework of the CAP and the rising societal demand for food security and environmental sustainability, questions arise about how we can assess the supply of soil functions across Europe and to what extent synergies and trade-offs between soil functions exist across different land-use types and climatic zones. As management actions and environmental conditions influence the relationship between ecosystem services (Dade et al, 2019), we hypothesized that synergies and trade-offs between soil functions vary by land use and climatic zone
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