Browsing by Author "Hessel, Rudi"

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    Do we speak one language on the way to sustainable soil management in Europe? A terminology check via an EU-wide survey.
    (John Wiley & Sons, 2024) Weninger, Thomas; Ramler, David; Bondi, Giulia; Asins, Sabina; O'Sullivan, Lilian; Assennato, Francesca; Astover, Alar; Bispo, Antonio ; Borůvka, Luboˇs ; Buttafuoco, Gabriele ; Calzolari, Costanza ; Castanheira, Nadia ; Cousin, Isabelle ; Elsen, Erik van den; Foldal, Cecilie ; Hessel, Rudi ; Kadžiulienė, Zydrė ; Kukk, Liia ; Molina, Maria J. ; Montagne, David ; Oorts, Katrien ; Pindral, Sylwia ; Ungaro, Fabrizio ; Klimkowicz-Pawlas, Agnieszka
    European soils are under increasing pressure, making it difficult to maintain the provision of soil ecosystem services (SESs). A better understanding of soil processes is needed to counteract soil threats (STs) and to promote sustainable soil management. The EJP SOIL programme of the EU provides a framework for the necessary research. However, different definitions of soil-related terms potentially lead to varied understandings of concepts. Furthermore, there are numerous indicators available to quantify STs or SESs. As unclear communication is a key barrier that hinders the implementation of research results into practice, this study aimed to answer the question about whether the terminology of large-scale initiatives is adequately understood within the soil-science community and nonresearch stakeholders. An online questionnaire was used to provide definitions for 33 soil-related terms in both scientific and plain language, as well as indicators for seven SESs and 11 STs. Participants were asked to rate their agreement with the definitions and indicators on a seven-grade Likert scale. The level of agreement was calculated as the percentage of ratings above 4, the neutral position. The survey was available from June to September 2023 and was distributed by a snowball approach. More than 260 stakeholders assessed the survey; 70% of respondents were researchers, and 15% were practitioners. Mean agreement levels for the definitions and indicators were generally high, at 85% and 78% respectively. However, it was apparent that the lowest agreement was found for terms that are relatively new, such as Ecosystem Services and Bundle, or unfamiliar for certain subgroups, such as ecological terms for stakeholders working at the farm scale. Due to their distinct majority, the results of this study primarily reflect the opinions of scientists. Thus, broad conclusions can only be drawn by comparing scientists with non-scientists. In this regard, the agreement was surprisingly high across all types of questions. The combined outcomes indicate that there is still a need to facilitate communication between stakeholders and to improve knowledge distribution strategies. Nevertheless, this study can support and be used by future projects and programmes, especially regarding the harmonization of terminology and methods.
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    From Soil Threats to Soil Health: Prevention or Remediation
    (Wiley, 2026-05-14) Suleymanov, Azamat; Cornu, Sophie; Coblinski, João Augusto; Montagne, David; Hessel, Rudi; Cousin, Isabelle; Bispo, Antonio; Saby, Nicolas P. A.
    While soil threats and soil health are two interrelated, sometimes confused, concepts, we demonstrated here that a clear separa-tion between these two concepts associated to a mapping of both soil threats and soil health is necessary. Soil threats are com-monly defined as processes that may degrade the soil properties, functions or services, while soil health describes the state of thesoil at a given moment in time. As a consequence, an unhealthy soil is a soil which is degraded compared to a reference. Mappingsoil threats or soil health results then in different but complementary views of the situation. Mapping soil threats informs ac-tions to prevent soil degradation, while mapping soil health indicates the capacity of soils to provide functions and places whereremediation is needed. In this study, we demonstrated the differences between these concepts by comparing projection mapsfor 2050 of soil threats and soil health by considering soil compaction and loss of soil organic carbon (SOC) as soil threats andbulk density and SOC stock as basic soil properties to evaluate both soil threat and soil health in terms of the above-mentionedtwo soil descriptors. These maps were produced by digital soil mapping, taking into account changes in climate and land use inthe European Union (EU). Soil threats were mapped using soil property change between 1980 and 2050 as indicators, that is, adecrease in SOC stocks for SOC loss and increase in soil bulk density for compaction. For soil health assessment, as referencesare needed, we defined soil areas that could be considered as homogeneous by combining soil, climate and land use informationand defined for each area a threshold for soil health based on a quantiles approach. As a result, the obtained soil threat and healthmaps were very different, as healthy soils can be under threat but not have crossed the threshold yet, while unhealthy soils maynot be under threat anymore if no more degradation occurs. These results demonstrate that reading a map requires a good priorunderstanding of the meaning of the indicators used in order to be able to interpret it in terms of threat or health and to be ableto select appropriate metrics, which will not be the same in both cases. Indeed, while soil health maps identify degraded areaswhere the soil lost part or all its capacity to provide functions and that need remediation, soil threat maps offer vital informationabout potential vulnerabilities and areas requiring intervention or management strategies.