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Abstract Soil physics defines soil water, air, and temperature regimes that are crucial for agricultural production, the quality of water resources, and waste management. Positioning such activities in the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will provide a valuable link to the international policy arena and should also include consideration of other SDGs dealing with climate change, biodiversity preservation, and soil health, thereby covering aspects of SDG 2 (zero hunger), SDG3 (good health and wellbeing), SDG6 (clean water and sanitation), SDG13 (climate action), and SDG15 (life on land). Combined expertise of soil physicists and pedologists in hydropedology offers a basic soil package, to be completed by soil chemists and biologists, to interdisciplinary teams studying ecosystem services in line with SDGs. Soils not being isotropic and homogeneous, pedology offers descriptions of soil heterogeneity, requiring innovative measuring methods. Digital mapping significantly improves the quality of traditional soil maps by being more quantitative at lower cost. Socioeconomic conditions are important elements of sustainable development as is recognized by the soil security concept, distinguishing soil connectivity with users and soil codification, linking soil with the policy arena. The latter has been successfully achieved in South Africa. Innovative, “applied” interdisciplinary research is needed to develop operational methods, assessing ecosystem services that are relatively of low cost, simple, and transparent, allowing acceptance by critical stakeholders. Modern proximal sensing techniques offer a promising perspective. An exploratory case study of a Dutch: “Living Lab” is referred to as an example of such an “applied” interdisciplinary approach.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were intended to be met by 2030, but recent reviews show that this will not be achieved, and recommendations have been made to heads of state, governments, the international community, and member states to strengthen their efforts. Focusing on agriculture, we argue that a bottom-up effort is also needed in living labs, one that truly involves farmers, as they are now confused about, and resistant to, top-down rules and regulations. To provide clarity, we suggest the following: (i) selecting key SDGs by considering the proportionality principle, and (ii) defining ecosystem services in terms of indicators and thresholds for income, the production of healthy food, the protection of water quality, contribution to energy preservation and climate mitigation, and the protection of life on land, including soil health (SDGs 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 13, 15). Indicators and thresholds have to be clear and measurable and achievable within reasonable costs. The introduction of innovative sensing techniques allowed the rapid generation of relevant soil data in the field of living labs. When meeting all thresholds, a “lighthouse” is established to act as an inspiring example for farmers with similar soils in a given region. Policies should focus on achieving thresholds of a set of indicators rather than on prescribing certain top-down management measures.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have a deadline of 2030 so, restricting attention to agriculture, development and implementation of management measures, aimed at reaching the goals, is urgent. Even though the current 159 very broad targets and 234 indicators for the SDGs don't mention soils, soils play a key role when addressing indicators 2.4.1 and 15.3.1 aimed at “sustainable agriculture” and “degraded land”, by introducing operational methods to assess soil health and interdisciplinary ecosystem services in line with the SDGs. Application of the soil security concept, combining biophysical and socioeconomic approaches, is essential for sustainability research where dominant socioeconomic considerations by stakeholders should frame the biophysical analysis. If stakeholders don't embrace SDG-inspired innovative management, nothing will materialize in the real world. Much research is still needed to address inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability issues but a plea is made at this critical point in time to also apply a relatively straightforward and pragmatic research approach, essentially based on available data and methods, to assess ecosystem services, defining indicators and thresholds, in line with five key SDGs. Reference is made to an exploratory Dutch case study in a:”Living Lab”. The National Soil Health Institute in the US has already pioneered such a pragmatic approach by first emphasizing socioeconomic aspects and by incorporating the soil health analysis in regenerative farm management that is recognized by farmers. But the five ecosystem services will still have to be assessed here to maintain the link with the SDGs and the policy arena. The 5C's of soil security apply very well at farm level. The soil science profession will benefit from showing specific examples of “Living Labs” where five thresholds of ecosystem services are met, creating: ”Lighthouses” showing examples of achieved sustainable development in which soil health plays a key role as demonstrated by specific measurements.

Long a rather abstract concept, sustainable development has since 2015 been defined by the United Nations in terms of goals (SDGs), specified by targets and indicators.Soils play an important role in several land-related SDGs by their contribution to ecosystem services that, in turn, contribute to biomass production (SDG2), water quality (SDG6), climate mitigation (SDFG13) and biodiversity preservation (SDG15). These goals have been adopted by the European Union when defining their Green Deal. However, sustainable development will only be achieved when stakeholders adopt appropriate management measures that result in a satisfactory level of all four ecosystem services. Adoption, however, is not only a function of technical considerations but is also highly affected by socioeconomic and even psychological factors. The soil security concept that considers both: “hard”and “soft” criteria, is therefore well suited to act as a roadmap towards a sustainable future, focusing soil contributions to ecosystem services and the SDGs. A storyline is proposed starting with connectivity, defining interaction processes among all partners involved in the sustainability debate, followed by condition, and capability that can be defined by a recently proposed quantitative expression of soil health. Soil Capitol expresses soil contributions to ecosystem services in financial terms and thus contributes to connectivity when examples show that non-soil contributions are much more expensive. Environmental laws and regulations, expressed by codification, ideally link soil performance to societal relevance but the tension between individual desires and societal demands requires modern forms of connectivity in terms of willingness to: “joint-learning”, supported by modern communication theory. Following the complete storyline of the 5C's, as proposed by the soil security concept, can make future soil research much more effective from a societal and political point of view.

Reaching the land-related UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and similar goals articulated by the EU Green Deal (GD) by 2030 presents a major challenge and requires a pragmatic approach focused on joint learning by land users (mostly farmers), researchers and other stakeholders in “Living Labs” and system experiments at experimental farms of research organizations. Defining specific indicators and thresholds for ecosystem services in line with land-related SDGs is crucial to establish “Lighthouses” that can act as inspiring examples if they meet the various thresholds. This exploratory paper discusses indicators and thresholds for an arable farm operating on marine, calcareous light clay soils in the Netherlands. Studies of a system experiment are used to discuss and test operational methodology to be widely applied when characterizing many “Living Labs” in future, as planned by the European Union. The important role of soils in contributing to ecosystem services is discussed in terms of soil health. Recommendations are made for innovative methodology to be associated with all land-related SDGs. Satisfying the thresholds of ecosystem services, which will vary by soil type, region and farm type, can be the basis for farm subsidies, such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Research on Living Labs and in system experiments has to be judged by different criteria than those associated with traditional linear research. The important contributions of soils to achieve ecosystem services are framed in terms of soil health and are the most effective way to promote soil science in a by now widely desired inter- and transdisciplinary context.

The general concept of sustainable development has been specified in terms of goals, targets, and indicators by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in 2015, followed by the Green Deal of the European Union in 2019. The focus on targets and indicators does, however, not address the issue as to how these goals can be achieved for land-related SDGs in the real world, and attention in this paper is therefore focused on how land management can contribute to providing ecosystem services in line with the aims of the SDGs and the Green Deal. Agricultural production systems should at least produce healthy food (SDG2 and 3), protect ground- and surface water quality (SDG6), mitigate climate change (SDG13), avoid soil degradation, and support biodiversity (SDG15). The corresponding ecosystem services are discussed with particular emphasis on the role of soils, which are characterized in terms of soil health, defined as: contributing to ecosystem services in line with the SDGs and the Green Deal. Appropriate management, as developed and proposed by researchers working jointly with farmers in living labs, can only be realized when it is part of sound long-term business plans, supported by independent advice that is focused on farmers’ concerns based on the requirements for adaptive management. The research effort in living labs, addressing “wicked” problems, needs to be judged differently from classical linear research. As the development of successful ecosystem services requires an interdisciplinary research effort based on a systems analysis, SDG-oriented soil research in the future should be focused on: (i) presenting suitable data to the interdisciplinary effort beyond standard data to be found in existing databases; (ii) using soil types as “carriers of information” to allow extrapolation of results; (iii) providing data with a comparable degree of detail when analyzing the various ecosystem services, and (iv) revisit past experiences in soil survey and soil fertility research when contact with farmers was intense, as is again needed in future to realize ecosystem services in line with the SDGs and the Green Deal.

Abstract Precision Agriculture is advancing but not as fast as predicted 5?years ago. The development of proper decision-support systems for implementing precision decisions remains a major stumbling block to adoption. Other critical research issues are discussed, namely, insufficient recognition of temporal variation, lack of whole-farm focus, crop quality assessment methods, product tracking and environmental auditing. A generic research programme for precision agriculture is presented. A typology of agriculture countries is introduced and the potential of each type for precision agriculture discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]