On soil districts

作者：Alexandre M.J.‐C. Wadoux, Léa Courteille, Dominique Arrouays, Lucas Carvalho Gomes, Jérôme Cortet, Rachel Creamer, Einar Eberhardt, Mogens Humlekrog Greve, Erik Grüneberg, Roland Harhoff, G.B.M. Heuvelink, Ina Krahl, Philippe Lagacherie, Ladislav Miko, Vera Leatitia Mulder, László Pásztor, Silvia Pieper, Anne C Richer-De-Forges, Antonio Rafael Sánchez‐Rodríguez, David G. Rossiter, Bastian Steinhoff‐Knopp, Stefanie Stöckhardt, Gábor Szatmári, Katalin Takács, Maria Α. Tsiafouli, Tom Vanwalleghem, Nicole Wellbrock, Johanna Wetterlind · 发表于：Geoderma · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1016/j.geoderma.2024.117065 · 被引用次数：20 · 研究领域：Soil Geostatistics and Mapping、Soil erosion and sediment transport、Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics

In 2023, the European Commission released a legislative proposal for a Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience which aims to define a legal framework to achieve healthy soils across the European Union (EU) by 2050. A key component of the initial Directive is the mandate for Member States to establish basic geographic soil governance units, referred to as soil districts, and appoint a district-specific authority to oversee the implementation of soil health assessments. This paper proposes an operational definition of the districts following the conditions outlined in the proposal for the Directive and discusses various attention points for their implementation. Tentative districts were developed for seven EU countries, considering soil type, climate, topography, and land cover factors, starting from the smallest existing administrative unit (i.e. municipalities). Experts were asked to report on the applicability of the proposed districts within well-known pedo-ecological regions and discuss the relevance of the districts for establishing an EU-wide monitoring network and reporting on soil health and degradation. The outcomes highlight the need for detailed soil maps to account for specific soil types when stratifying countries into soil districts. The soilscape approach allows for a consistent method to defining soil districts across Member States. This enables contrasting soils within a district to be managed in a similar manner, with soil degradation/health thresholds ap...