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Soil health is expected to be of key importance for plant growth and ecosystem functioning. However, whether soil health is linked to primary productivity across environmental gradients and land-use types remains poorly understood. To address this gap, we conducted a pan-European field study including 588 sites from 27 countries to investigate the link between soil health and primary productivity across three major land-use types: woodlands, grasslands and croplands. We found that mean soil health (a composite index based on soil properties, biodiversity and plant disease control) in woodlands was 31.4% higher than in grasslands and 76.1% higher than in croplands. Soil health was positively linked to cropland and grassland productivity at the continental scale, whereas climate best explained woodland productivity. Among microbial diversity indicators, we observed a positive association between the richness of Acidobacteria, Firmicutes and Proteobacteria and primary productivity. Among microbial functional groups, we found that primary productivity in croplands and grasslands was positively related to nitrogen-fixing bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi and negatively related to plant pathogens. Together, our results point to the importance of soil biodiversity and soil health for maintaining primary productivity across contrasting land-use types., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

Soil microbial biomass and activity strongly depend on land use, vegetation cover, climate, and soil physicochemical properties. In most cases, this dependence was assessed by one-to-one correlations while by employing network analysis, information about network robustness and the balance between stochasticity and determinism controlling connectivity, was revealed. In this study, we further elaborated on the hypothesis of Smith et al. (2021) that cropland soils depended more on climate variables and therefore are more vulnerable to climate change. We used the same dataset with that of Smith et al. (2021) that contains seasonal microbial, climate and soil variables collected from 881 soil points representing the main land uses in Europe: forests, grassland, cropland. We examined complete (both direct and indirect relationships) and incomplete networks (only direct relationships) and recorded higher robustness in the former. Partial Least Square results showed that on average more than 45% of microbial attributes' variability was predicted by climate and habitat drivers denoting medium to strong effect of habitat filtering. Network architecture slightly affected by season or land use type; it followed the core/periphery structure with positive and negative interactions and no hub nodes. Microbial attributes (biomass, activity and their ratio) mostly belong to core block together with Soil Organic Carbon (SOC), while climate and soil variables to periphery block with the exception of cropland networks, denoting the higher dependence between microbial and climate variables in these latter. All complete networks appeared robust except for cropland and forest in summer, a finding that disagrees with our initial hypothesis about cropland. Networks' connectivity was controlled stronger by stochasticity in forest than in croplands. The lack of human interventions in forest soils increase habitat homogeneity enhancing the influence of stochastic agents such as microbial unlimited dispersal and/or stochastic extinction. The increased stochasticity implies the necessity for proactive management actions., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

New policy developments have emerged in relation to soil conservation after 2020. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2023-2027, the proposal for a Soil Monitoring Law and the mission 'A Soil Deal for Europe' have shaped a new policy framework at EU level, which requires updated assessments on soil erosion and land degradation. The EU Soil Observatory (EUSO) successfully organised a scientific workshop on 'Soil erosion for the EU' in June 2022. The event has seen the participation of more than 330 people from 63 countries, addressing important topics such as (i) management practices, (ii) large scale modelling, (iii) the importance of sediments in nutrient cycle, (vi) the role of landslides and (v) laying the foundations for early career scientists. As a follow up, among the 120 abstracts submitted in the workshop, we received fifteen manuscripts, out of which nine were selected for publication in the present special issue. In this editorial, we summarize the major challenges that the soil erosion research community faces in relation to supporting the increasing role of soils in the EU Green Deal., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests:Panos Panagos reports financial support was provided by European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra. Panos Panagos reports a relationship with European Commission Joint Research Centre Ispra that includes: employment. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The use of cover crops (CCs) is a promising cropland management practice with multiple benefits, notably in reducing soil erosion and increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) storage. However, the current ability to represent these factors in land surface models remains limited to small scales or simplified and lumped approaches due to the lack of a sediment-carbon erosion displacement scheme. This precludes a thorough understanding of the consequences of introducing a CC into agricultural systems. In this work, this problem was addressed in two steps with the spatially distributed CE-DYNAM model. First, the historical effect of soil erosion, transport, and deposition on the soil carbon budget at a continental scale in Europe was characterized since the early industrial era, using reconstructed climate and land use forcings. Then, the impact of two distinct policy-oriented scenarios for the introduction of CCs were evaluated, covering the European cropping systems where surface erosion rates or nitrate susceptibility are critical. The evaluation focused on the increase in SOC storage and the export of particulate organic carbon (POC) to the oceans, compiling a continental-scale carbon budget. The results indicated that Europe exported 1.95 TgC/year of POC to the oceans in the last decade, and that CCs can contribute to reducing this amount while increasing SOC storage. Compared to the simulation without CCs, the additional rate of SOC storage induced by CCs peaked after 10 years of their adoption, followed by a decrease, and the cumulative POC export reduction stabilized after around 13 years. The findings indicate that the impacts of CCs on SOC and reduced POC export are persistent regardless of their spatial allocation adopted in the scenarios. Together, the results highlight the importance of taking the temporal aspect of CC adoption into account and indicate that CCs alone are not sufficient to meet the targets of the 4‰ initiative. Despite some known model limitations, which include the lack of feedback of erosion on the net primary productivity and the representation of carbon fluxes with an emulator, the current work constitutes the first approach to successfully couple a distributed routing scheme of eroded carbon to a land carbon model emulator at a reasonably high resolution and continental scale. SHORT ABSTRACT: A spatially distributed model coupling erosion, transport, and deposition to the carbon cycle was developed. Then, it was used to simulate the impact of cover crops on both erosion and carbon, to show that cover crops can simultaneously increase organic carbon storage and reduce particulate organic carbon export to the oceans. The results seemed persistent regardless of the spatial distribution of cover crops., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Factors regulating the diversity and composition of soil microbial communities include soil properties, land cover and climate. How these factors interact at large scale remains poorly investigated. Here, we used an extensive dataset including 715 locations from 24 European countries to investigate the interactive effects of climatic region, land cover and pH on soil bacteria and fungi. We found that differences in microbial diversity and community composition between land cover types depended on the climatic region. In Atlantic, Boreal and Continental regions, microbial richness was higher in croplands and grasslands than woodlands while richness in Mediterranean areas did not vary significantly among land cover types. These differences were further related to soil pH, as a driver of bacterial and fungal richness in most climatic regions, but the interaction of pH with land cover depended on the region. Microbial community composition differed the most between croplands and woodlands in all regions, mainly due to differences in pH. In the Mediterranean region, bacterial communities in woodlands and grasslands were the most similar, whereas in other regions, grassland and cropland-associated bacteria showed more similarity. Overall, we showed that key factors interact in shaping soil microbial communities in a climate-dependent way at large scale., (© 2024 The Authors. Environmental Microbiology published by Applied Microbiology International and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Future phosphorus (P) shortages could seriously affect terrestrial productivity and food security. We investigated the changes in topsoil available P (AP) and total P (TP) in China's forests, grasslands, paddy fields, and upland croplands during the 1980s-2010s based on substantial repeated soil P measurements (63,220 samples in the 1980s, 2000s, and 2010s) and machine learning techniques. Between the 1980s and 2010s, total soil AP stock increased with a small but significant rate of 0.13 kg P ha -1  year -1 , but total soil TP stock declined substantially (4.5 kg P ha -1  year -1 ) in the four ecosystems. We quantified the P budgets of soil-plant systems by harmonizing P fluxes from various sources for this period. Matching trends of soil contents over the decades with P budgets and fluxes, we found that the P-surplus in cultivated soils (especially in upland croplands) might be overestimated due to the great soil TP pool compared to fertilization and the substantial soil P losses through plant uptake and water erosion that offset the P additions. Our findings of P-deficit in China raise the alarm on the sustainability of future biomass production (especially in forests), highlight the urgency of P recycling in croplands, and emphasize the critical role of country-level basic data in guiding sound policies to tackle the global P crises., (© 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The EU Soil Strategy 2030 aims to increase soil organic carbon (SOC) in agricultural land to enhance soil health and support biodiversity as well as to offset greenhouse gas emissions through soil carbon sequestration. Therefore, the quantification of current SOC stocks and the spatial identification of the main drivers of SOC changes is paramount in the preparation of agricultural policies aimed at enhancing the resilience of agricultural systems in the EU. In this context, changes of SOC stocks (Δ SOCs) for the EU + UK between 2009 and 2018 were estimated by fitting a quantile generalized additive model (qGAM) on data obtained from the revisited points of the Land Use/Land Cover Area Frame Survey (LUCAS) performed in 2009, 2015 and 2018. The analysis of the partial effects derived from the fitted qGAM model shows that land use and land use change observed in the 2009, 2015 and 2018 LUCAS campaigns (i.e. continuous grassland [GGG] or cropland [CCC], conversion grassland to cropland (GGC or GCC) and vice versa [CGG or CCG]) was one of the main drivers of SOC changes. The CCC was the factor that contributed to the lowest negative change on Δ SOC with an estimated partial effect of -0.04 ± 0.01 g C kg -1  year -1 , while the GGG the highest positive change with an estimated partial effect of 0.49 ± 0.02 g C kg -1  year -1 . This confirms the C sequestration potential of converting cropland to grassland. However, it is important to consider that local soil and environmental conditions may either diminish or enhance the grassland's positive effect on soil C storage. In the EU + UK, the estimated current (2018) topsoil (0-20 cm) SOC stock in agricultural land below 1000 m a.s.l was 9.3 Gt, with a Δ SOC of -0.75% in the period 2009-2018. The highest estimated SOC losses were concentrated in central-northern countries, while marginal losses were observed in the southeast., (© 2023 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Wind harnessing is a fast-developing and cost-effective Renewable Energy Source, but the land impacts of wind power stations are often overlooked or underestimated. We digitized land take, i.e., the generation of artificial land, derived from 90 wind power stations in Greece constructed between 2002 and 2020 (1.2 GW). We found substantial land take impacts of 7729 m 2 /MW (3.5 m 2 /MWh) of new artificial land, 148 m/MW of new roads and 174 m/MW of widened roads on average. Models showed that the number and size of wind turbines, the absence of other existing infrastructures and the elevational difference across new access roads increased artificial land generation. The elevational difference across new and widened access roads also increased their length. New wind power stations in Greece are planned to be installed at higher elevations and in terrains facing higher risks for soil erosion and soil biodiversity. The general tendency in the European Union is to sit fewer wind power stations in mountainous and forested land. Still, this pattern is inversed in several countries, particularly in Southern Europe. After screening 29 policy and legal documents, we found that land take is indirectly inferred in the global policy but more directly in the European policy through five non-legally binding documents and three Directives. However, the current European energy policies seem to conflict with nature conservation policies, risking land take acceleration. The study provides insights for reducing land take when planning and constructing wind power stations. We underline the need for better quantification of land take and its integration in the complex process of sustainable spatial planning of investments., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Factors driving microbial community composition and diversity are well established but the relationship with microbial functioning is poorly understood, especially at large scales. We analysed microbial biodiversity metrics and distribution of potential functional groups along a gradient of increasing land-use perturbation, detecting over 79,000 bacterial and 25,000 fungal OTUs in 715 sites across 24 European countries. We found the lowest bacterial and fungal diversity in less-disturbed environments (woodlands) compared to grasslands and highly-disturbed environments (croplands). Highly-disturbed environments contain significantly more bacterial chemoheterotrophs, harbour a higher proportion of fungal plant pathogens and saprotrophs, and have less beneficial fungal plant symbionts compared to woodlands and extensively-managed grasslands. Spatial patterns of microbial communities and predicted functions are best explained when interactions among the major determinants (vegetation cover, climate, soil properties) are considered. We propose guidelines for environmental policy actions and argue that taxonomical and functional diversity should be considered simultaneously for monitoring purposes., (© 2023. the European Union.)

Despite phosphorus (P) being crucial for plant nutrition and thus food security, excessive P fertilization harms soil and aquatic ecosystems. Accordingly, the European Green Deal and derived strategies aim to reduce P losses and fertilizer consumption in agricultural soils. The objective of this study is to calculate a soil P budget, allowing the quantification of the P surpluses/deficits in the European Union (EU) and the UK, considering the major inputs (inorganic fertilizers, manure, atmospheric deposition, and chemical weathering) and outputs (crop production, plant residues removal, losses by erosion) for the period 2011-2019. The Land Use/Cover Area frame Survey (LUCAS) topsoil data include measured values for almost 22,000 samples for both available and total P. With advanced machine learning models, we developed maps for both attributes at 500 m resolution. We estimated the available P for crops at a mean value of 83 kg ha -1 with a clear distinction between North and South. The ratio of available P to the total P is about 1:17. The inorganic fertilizers and manure contribute almost equally as P inputs (mean 16 ± 2 kg P ha -1 yr -1 at 90 % confidence level) to agricultural soils, with high regional variations depending on farming practices, livestock density, and cropping systems. The P outputs came mainly from the exportation by the harvest of crop products and residues (97.5 %) and, secondly, by erosion. Using a sediment distribution model, we quantified the P fluxes to river basins and sea outlets. In the EU and UK, we estimated an average surplus of 0.8 kg P ha -1 yr -1 with high variability between countries with some regional variations. The P annual budget at regional scale showed ample possibility to improve P management by both reducing inputs in regions with high surplus (and P soil available) and rebalancing fertilization in those at risk of soil fertility depletion., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

We propose a way to synthesize different approaches to globally map land degradation by combining vegetation and soil indicators into a consistent framework for assessing land degradation as an environmental 'debt'. our combined approach reveals a broader lens for land degradation through global change, in particular, identifying hot-spots for the different kinds of land degradation., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Copper-based fungicides (Cu f ) are used in European (EU) vineyards to prevent fungal diseases. Soil physicochemical properties locally govern the variation of the total copper content (Cu t ) in EU vineyards. However, variables controlling Cu t distribution at a larger scale are poorly known. Here, machine learning techniques were used to identify governing variables and to predict the Cu t distribution in EU vineyards. Precipitation, aridity and soil organic carbon are key variables explaining together 45% of Cu t distribution across EU vineyards. This underlines the effect of both climate and soil properties on Cu t distribution. The average net export of Cu at the EU scale is 0.29 kg Cu ha -1 , which is 2 orders of magnitude less than the net accumulation of Cu (24.8 kg Cu ha -1 ). Four scenarios of Cu f application were compared. The current EU regulation with a maximum of 4 kg Cu ha -1 year -1 may increase by 2% of the EU vineyard area, exceeding the predicted no-effect concentration (PNEC) in soil in the next 100 years. Overall, our results highlight the vineyard areas requiring specific remediation measures and strategies of Cu f use to manage a trade-off between pest control and soil and water contamination.

While agricultural systems are a major pillar in global food security, their productivity is currently threatened by many environmental issues triggered by anthropogenic climate change and human activities, such as land degradation. However, the planetary spatial footprint of land degradation processes on arable lands, which can be considered a major component of global agricultural systems, is still insufficiently well understood. This study analyzes the land degradation footprint on global arable lands, using complex geospatial data on certain major degradation processes, i.e. aridity, soil erosion, vegetation decline, soil salinization and soil organic carbon decline. By applying geostatistical techniques that are representative for identifying the incidence of the five land degradation processes in global arable lands, results showed that aridity is by far the largest singular pressure for these agricultural systems, affecting ~40% of the arable lands' area, which cover approximately 14 million km 2 globally. It was found that soil erosion is another major degradation process, the unilateral impact of which affects ~20% of global arable systems. The results also showed that the two degradation processes simultaneously affect an additional ~7% of global arable lands, which makes this synergy the most common form of multiple pressure of land degradative conditions across the world's arable areas. The absolute statistical data showed that India, the United States, China, Brazil, Argentina, Russia and Australia are the most vulnerable countries in the world to the various pathways of arable land degradation. Also, in terms of percentages, statistical observations showed that African countries are the most heavily affected by arable system degradation. This study's findings can be useful for prioritizing agricultural management actions that can mitigate the negative effects of the two degradation processes or of others that currently affect many arable systems across the planet., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Over the last two decades or so, there has been many research carried out to understand the mechanics and spatial distribution of soil loss by water erosion and to a lesser extent of wind, piping and tillage erosion. The acquired knowledge helped the development of prediction tools useful to support decision-makers in both ex-ante and ex-post policy evaluation. In Europe, recent studies have modelled water, wind and tillage erosion at continental scale and shed new light on their geography. However, to acquire a comprehensive picture of soil erosion threats more processes need to be addressed and made visible to decision-makers. Since 1986, a small number of studies have pointed to an additional significant soil degradation process occurring when harvesting root and tuber crops. Field observations and measurements have shown that considerable amounts of soil can be removed from the field due to soil sticking to the harvested roots and the export of soil clods during the crop harvest. This study aims to scale up the findings of past studies, carried out at plot, regional, and national level, in order to obtain some preliminary insights into the magnitude of soil loss from cropland due to sugar beets and potatoes harvesting in Europe. We address this issue at European Union (EU) scale taking into account long-term (1975-2016) crop statistics of sugar beet and potato aggregated at regional and country levels. During the period 2000-2016, sugar beets and potatoes covered in average ca. 4.2 million ha (3.81%) of the EU-28 arable land estimated at 110 million ha. The total Soil Loss by Crop Harvesting (SLCH) is estimated at ca. 14.7 million tons yr -1 in the EU-28. We estimate that ca. 65% of the total SLCH is due to harvesting of sugar beets and the rest as a result of potatoes harvesting., (Copyright © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Soil degradation due to erosion is connected to two serious environmental impacts: (i) on-site soil loss and (ii) off-site effects of sediment transfer through the landscape. The potential impact of soil erosion processes on biogeochemical cycles has received increasing attention in the last two decades. Properly designed modelling assumptions on effective soil loss are a key pre-requisite to improve our understanding of the magnitude of nutrients that are mobilized through soil erosion and the resultant effects. The aim of this study is to quantify the potential spatial displacement and transport of soil sediments due to water erosion at European scale. We computed long-term averages of annual soil loss and deposition rates by means of the extensively tested spatially distributed WaTEM/SEDEM model. Our findings indicate that soil loss from Europe in the riverine systems is about 15% of the estimated gross on-site erosion. The estimated sediment yield totals 0.164 ± 0.013Pgyr -1 (which corresponds to 4.62 ± 0.37Mgha -1 yr -1 in the erosion area). The greatest amount of gross on-site erosion as well as soil loss to rivers occurs in the agricultural land (93.5%). By contrast, forestland and other semi-natural vegetation areas experience an overall surplus of sediments which is driven by a re-deposition of sediments eroded from agricultural land. Combining the predicted soil loss rates with the European soil organic carbon (SOC) stock, we estimate a SOC displacement by water erosion of 14.5Tg yr -1 . The SOC potentially transferred to the riverine system equals to 2.2Tgyr -1 (~15%). Integrated sediment delivery-biogeochemical models need to answer the question on how carbon mineralization during detachment and transport might be balanced or even off-set by carbon sequestration due to dynamic replacement and sediment burial., (Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The idea of offsetting anthropogenic CO2 emissions by increasing global soil organic carbon (SOC), as recently proposed by French authorities ahead of COP21 in the 'four per mil' initiative, is notable. However, a high uncertainty still exits on land C balance components. In particular, the role of erosion in the global C cycle is not totally disentangled, leading to disagreement whether this process induces lands to be a source or sink of CO2. To investigate this issue, we coupled soil erosion into a biogeochemistry model, running at 1 km(2) resolution across the agricultural soils of the European Union (EU). Based on data-driven assumptions, the simulation took into account also soil deposition within grid cells and the potential C export to riverine systems, in a way to be conservative in a mass balance. We estimated that 143 of 187 Mha have C erosion rates <0.05 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1), although some hot-spot areas showed eroded SOC >0.45 Mg C ha(-1) yr(-1). In comparison with a baseline without erosion, the model suggested an erosion-induced sink of atmospheric C consistent with previous empirical-based studies. Integrating all C fluxes for the EU agricultural soils, we estimated a net C loss or gain of -2.28 and +0.79 Tg yr(-1) of CO2 eq, respectively, depending on the value for the short-term enhancement of soil C mineralization due to soil disruption and displacement/transport with erosion. We concluded that erosion fluxes were in the same order of current carbon gains from improved management. Even if erosion could potentially induce a sink for atmospheric CO2, strong agricultural policies are needed to prevent or reduce soil erosion, in order to maintain soil health and productivity., (© 2015 The Authors. Global Change Biology Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Bottom-up estimates from long-term field experiments and modelling are the most commonly used approaches to estimate the carbon (C) sequestration potential of the agricultural sector. However, when data are required at European level, important margins of uncertainty still exist due to the representativeness of local data at large scale or different assumptions and information utilized for running models. In this context, a pan-European (EU + Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Norway) simulation platform with high spatial resolution and harmonized data sets was developed to provide consistent scenarios in support of possible carbon sequestration policies. Using the CENTURY agroecosystem model, six alternative management practices (AMP) scenarios were assessed as alternatives to the business as usual situation (BAU). These consisted of the conversion of arable land to grassland (and vice versa), straw incorporation, reduced tillage, straw incorporation combined with reduced tillage, ley cropping system and cover crops. The conversion into grassland showed the highest soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration rates, ranging between 0.4 and 0.8 t C ha(-1)  yr(-1) , while the opposite extreme scenario (100% of grassland conversion into arable) gave cumulated losses of up to 2 Gt of C by 2100. Among the other practices, ley cropping systems and cover crops gave better performances than straw incorporation and reduced tillage. The allocation of 12 to 28% of the European arable land to different AMP combinations resulted in a potential SOC sequestration of 101-336 Mt CO2 eq. by 2020 and 549-2141 Mt CO2 eq. by 2100. Modelled carbon sequestration rates compared with values from an ad hoc meta-analysis confirmed the robustness of these estimates., (© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The greatest obstacle to soil erosion modelling at larger spatial scales is the lack of data on soil characteristics. One key parameter for modelling soil erosion is the soil erodibility, expressed as the K-factor in the widely used soil erosion model, the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) and its revised version (RUSLE). The K-factor, which expresses the susceptibility of a soil to erode, is related to soil properties such as organic matter content, soil texture, soil structure and permeability. With the Land Use/Cover Area frame Survey (LUCAS) soil survey in 2009 a pan-European soil dataset is available for the first time, consisting of around 20,000 points across 25 Member States of the European Union. The aim of this study is the generation of a harmonised high-resolution soil erodibility map (with a grid cell size of 500 m) for the 25 EU Member States. Soil erodibility was calculated for the LUCAS survey points using the nomograph of Wischmeier and Smith (1978). A Cubist regression model was applied to correlate spatial data such as latitude, longitude, remotely sensed and terrain features in order to develop a high-resolution soil erodibility map. The mean K-factor for Europe was estimated at 0.032 thahha(-1)MJ(-1)mm(-1) with a standard deviation of 0.009 thahha(-1)MJ(-1)mm(-1). The yielded soil erodibility dataset compared well with the published local and regional soil erodibility data. However, the incorporation of the protective effect of surface stone cover, which is usually not considered for the soil erodibility calculations, resulted in an average 15% decrease of the K-factor. The exclusion of this effect in K-factor calculations is likely to result in an overestimation of soil erosion, particularly for the Mediterranean countries, where highest percentages of surface stone cover were observed., (Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Soil is a complex natural resource that is considered non-renewable in policy frameworks, and it plays a key role in maintaining a variety of ecosystem services (ES) and life-sustaining material cycles within the Earth's Critical Zone (CZ). However, currently, the ability of soil to deliver these services is being drastically reduced in many locations, and global loss of soil ecosystem services is estimated to increase each year as a result of many different threats, such as erosion and soil carbon loss. The European Union Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection alerts policy makers of the need to protect soil and proposes measures to mitigate soil degradation. In this context, the European Commission-funded research project on Soil Transformations in European Catchments (SoilTrEC) aims to quantify the processes that deliver soil ecosystem services in the Earth's Critical Zone and to quantify the impacts of environmental change on key soil functions. This is achieved by integrating the research results into decision-support tools and applying methods of economic valuation to soil ecosystem services. In this paper, we provide an overview of the SoilTrEC project, its organization, partnerships and implementation.

Proposed European policy in the agricultural sector will place higher emphasis on soil organic carbon (SOC), both as an indicator of soil quality and as a means to offset CO2 emissions through soil carbon (C) sequestration. Despite detailed national SOC data sets in several European Union (EU) Member States, a consistent C stock estimation at EU scale remains problematic. Data are often not directly comparable, different methods have been used to obtain values (e.g. sampling, laboratory analysis) and access may be restricted. Therefore, any evolution of EU policies on C accounting and sequestration may be constrained by a lack of an accurate SOC estimation and the availability of tools to carry out scenario analysis, especially for agricultural soils. In this context, a comprehensive model platform was established at a pan-European scale (EU + Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Norway) using the agro-ecosystem SOC model CENTURY. Almost 164 000 combinations of soil-climate-land use were computed, including the main arable crops, orchards and pasture. The model was implemented with the main management practices (e.g. irrigation, mineral and organic fertilization, tillage) derived from official statistics. The model results were tested against inventories from the European Environment and Observation Network (EIONET) and approximately 20 000 soil samples from the 2009 LUCAS survey, a monitoring project aiming at producing the first coherent, comprehensive and harmonized top-soil data set of the EU based on harmonized sampling and analytical methods. The CENTURY model estimation of the current 0-30 cm SOC stock of agricultural soils was 17.63 Gt; the model uncertainty estimation was below 36% in half of the NUTS2 regions considered. The model predicted an overall increase of this pool according to different climate-emission scenarios up to 2100, with C loss in the south and east of the area (involving 30% of the whole simulated agricultural land) compensated by a gain in central and northern regions. Generally, higher soil respiration was offset by higher C input as a consequence of increased CO2 atmospheric concentration and favourable crop growing conditions, especially in northern Europe. Considering the importance of SOC in future EU policies, this platform of simulation appears to be a very promising tool to orient future policymaking decisions., (© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Under the European Union Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection, the European Commission Directorate-General for the Environment and the European Environmental Agency (EEA) identified a decline in soil organic carbon and soil losses by erosion as priorities for the collection of policy relevant soil data at European scale. Moreover, the estimation of soil organic carbon content is of crucial importance for soil protection and for climate change mitigation strategies. Soil organic carbon is one of the attributes of the recently developed LUCAS soil database. The request for data on soil organic carbon and other soil attributes arose from an on-going debate about efforts to establish harmonized datasets for all EU countries with data on soil threats in order to support modeling activities and display variations in these soil conditions across Europe. In 2009, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre conducted the LUCAS soil survey, sampling ca. 20,000 points across 23 EU member states. This article describes the results obtained from analyzing the soil organic carbon data in the LUCAS soil database. The collected data were compared with the modeled European topsoil organic carbon content data developed at the JRC. The best fitted comparison was performed at NUTS2 level and showed underestimation of modeled data in southern Europe and overestimation in the new central eastern member states. There is a good correlation in certain regions for countries such as the United Kingdom, Slovenia, Italy, Ireland, and France. Here we assess the feasibility of producing comparable estimates of the soil organic carbon content at NUTS2 regional level for the European Union (EU27) and draw a comparison with existing modeled data. In addition to the data analysis, we suggest how the modeled data can be improved in future updates with better calibration of the model., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Antibiotic resistance crisis dictates the need for resistance monitoring and the search for new antibiotics. The development of monitoring protocols is hindered by the great diversity of resistance factors, while the “streetlight effect” denies the possibility of discovering novel drugs based on existing databases. In this study, we address these challenges using high-throughput environmental screening viewed from a trait-based ecological perspective. Through an in-depth analysis of the metagenomes of 658 topsoil samples spanning Europe, we explored the distribution of 241 prokaryotic and fungal genes responsible for producing metabolites with antibiotic properties and 485 antibiotic resistance genes. We analyzed the diversity of these gene collections at different levels and modeled the distribution of each gene across environmental gradients. Our analyses revealed several nonparallel distribution patterns of the genes encoding sequential steps of enzymatic pathways synthesizing large antibiotic groups, pointing to gaps in existing databases and suggesting potential for discovering new analogues of known antibiotics. We show that agricultural activity caused a continental-scale homogenization of microbial antibiotic-related machinery, emphasizing the importance of maintaining indigenous ecosystems within the landscape mosaic. Based on the relationships between the proportion of the genes in the metagenomes with the main predictors (soil pH, land cover type, climate temperature and humidity), we illustrate how the properties of chemical structures dictate the distribution of the genes responsible for their synthesis across environments. With this understanding, we propose general principles to facilitate the discovery of antibiotics, including principally new ones, establish abundance baselines for antibiotic resistance genes, and predict their dissemination.

This chapter summarizes the methods, results, and conclusions of a 5-year research project (SoilTrEC: Soil Transformations in European Catchments) on experimentation, process modeling, and computational simulation of soil functions and soil threats across a network of European, Chinese, and United States Critical Zone Observatories (CZOs). The study focused on the soil functions of biomass production, carbon storage, water storage and transmission, water filtration, transformation of nutrients, and maintaining habitat and genetic diversity. The principal results demonstrate that soil functions can be quantified as biophysical flows and transformations of material and energy. The functions can be simulated with mathematical models of soil processes within the soil profile and at the critical zone interfaces with vegetation and atmosphere, surface waters and the below-ground vadose zone and groundwater. A new dynamic model for soil structure development, together with data sets from the CZOs, demonstrate both seasonal fluctuations in soil structure dynamics related to vegetation dynamics and soil carbon inputs, and long-term trends (decadal) in soil carbon storage and soil structure development. Cross-site comparison for 20 soil profiles at seven field sites with variation in soil type, lithology, land cover, land use, and climate demonstrate that sites can be classified, using model parameter values for soil aggregation processes together with climatic conditions and soil physical properties, along a trajectory of soil structure development from incipient soil formation through productive land use to overly intensive land use with soil degradation. A new modeling code, the Integrated Critical Zone model, was applied with parameter sets developed from the CZO site data to simulate the biophysical flows and transformations that quantify multiple soil functions. Process simulations coupled the new model for soil structure dynamics with existing modeling approaches for soil carbon dynamics, nutrient transformations, vegetation dynamics, hydrological flow and transport, and geochemical equilibria and mineral weathering reactions. Successful calibration, testing, and application of the model with data sets from horticulture plot manipulation experiments demonstrate the potential to apply modeling and simulation to the scoping and design of new practices and policy options to enhance soil functions and reduce soil threats worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]