Horizon Europe Soilguard Project: Sustainable soil management to unleash the potential of soil biodiversity and increase environmental, economic, and social well-being
- Type Project
- Status In progress
- Execution 2021 -2025
- Assigned Budget 6.999.161,00 €
- Scope Europeo
- Main source of financing Horizon Europe 2021-2027
- Project website SOILGUARD
Unsustainable management and climate change are increasing land degradation and threatening soil biodiversity. Urgent action is therefore needed to incorporate sustainable soil management practices. However, major knowledge gaps related to biodiversity and soil-mediated ecosystem services must be addressed. Therefore, the EU-funded SOILGUARD project will develop a conceptual and analytical framework with the potential to become the global standard for future assessments of the status of soil biodiversity.
All knowledge will be shared through SOILGUARDIANS, a predictive tool based on the links between soil biodiversity, soil multifunctionality, and well-being to support stakeholders in their transition to sustainable management. SOILGUARD will co-create evidence-based conservation recommendations for policies and frameworks at the international and EU levels and support Member States' commitments within the Global Soil Partnership.
SOILGUARD actively promoted bridging the gap between knowledge holders and decision-makers by creating the Soilguard Knowledge Network and developing an innovative Soil Biodiversity and Well-being Framework. Several cross-fertilization actions and activities have been carried out in Europe, Argentina, Cameroon, and Thailand. As part of communication and dissemination activities, a total of 13 specialized workshops, 23 in-person presentations, and two major events have been organized.
The research has established land degradation gradients for seven EU NUTS-2 regions and three international regions, which are publicly available on the SOILGUARD website. Sampling protocols for soil biodiversity and multifunctionality were harmonized with the Soil BON initiative, LUCAS, and the GSP. A total of 233 samples were analyzed, including the taxonomic richness, abundance, and existing connections of faunal and microbial taxa, and their diversity was compared at larger scales with the effect of location, soil attributes, climate, land use, or landscape characteristics. Soil food web structure and co-occurrence patterns across regions and biomes, as well as food web metrics, were analyzed. Preliminary SOILGUARD results show the importance of climate and region-specific soil characteristics in determining the composition of soil biodiversity communities. Furthermore, the impact of sustainable land management and land degradation on soil biodiversity is highly regional and organism-dependent. The importance of soil biodiversity in maintaining soil multifunctionality was assessed using 27 different indicators covering six contributions of nature to people: food production, soil formation and protection, climate regulation, regulation of hazards and extreme events, regulation of harmful organisms, and regulation of freshwater.
The studies developed focus on increasing our understanding of the effect of multiple stressors on soil biodiversity and multifunctionality at seven sites in Europe through field drought simulations in 2022 and 2023 and a heatwave simulation. Soil samples were analyzed for multifunctionality metrics related to ecosystem functioning. Preliminary results from 2022 show that each site harbored unique soil biodiversity. Management effects on soil biodiversity were significant but largely site-dependent. Drought effects were small, varied by site, and were often masked by other drivers.
An integrated valuation approach was developed to assess the effects of soil management strategies on the provision of soil-mediated contributions from nature to people, which includes an economic and sociocultural valuation. The economic valuation approach incorporated both cost-based valuation methods and discrete choice experiments for the seven NUTS-2 regions of the EU, including the distinction between sustainable and unsustainable management. Information on sociodemographic characteristics was collected through surveys. In Denmark, Ireland, and Spain, sociocultural valuation contributed to the ranking and weighting of the importance of soil-mediated nature. The results indicate that average preferences are quite similar, with a preference for multifunctional landscapes, although they also reveal differences between respondents' preferences.
SOILGUARD envisions a future in which the conservation of soil biodiversity and the environmental, economic, and social well-being of EU biogeographic regions are ensured. Urgent action is needed to mainstream sustainable soil management practices and the understanding of soil biological diversity as a key nature-based solution to address land degradation and climate change stressors. The effectiveness of this call to action depends on addressing key knowledge gaps related to biodiversity and nature's soil-mediated contributions to people. Soil biodiversity assessment emerges as a key challenge to be overcome.
The objective of SOILGUARD is to boost the sustainable use of soil biodiversity to protect soil multifunctionality and increase economic, social, and environmental well-being. This is achieved by co-creating robust evidence of the links between soil management, soil biodiversity, soil multifunctionality, and human well-being. This evidence is obtained through a holistic and innovative Soil Biodiversity and Well-being Framework to fill knowledge gaps and quantify the environmental, economic, and social consequences of unsustainable soil management. All co-created knowledge will be shared through the SOILGUARDIANS APP, a predictive tool based on the causal links between soil biodiversity, soil multifunctionality, and well-being to support stakeholders in the transition to sustainable soil management. It is being developed as an innovation ecosystem for users to showcase, learn, and share experiences. SOILGUARD is co-creating evidence-based conservation recommendations for policies and frameworks at the international and EU levels and will support Member States' commitments within the Global Soil Partnership. SOILGUARD has the support and participation of the GSP, GSBI, SOIL-BON, ITPS, FAO, and IPBES.
SOILGUARD is developing soil biodiversity indicators that reflect changes in soil biota, its response to environmental conditions, and their functional consequences. Additional efforts are directed toward evaluating different methods for identifying biodiversity descriptors of soil richness/abundance. SOILGUARD also hopes to study the role of soil biota in soil functions and adaptation to climate change. Finally, SOILGUARD focuses on establishing key taxa in maintaining soil multifunctionality.
Sustainable soil management practices tailored to each region and biome will be proposed, based on the multifunctionality of soil biodiversity, taking into account the different drivers of land degradation and climate stressors. In parallel, we will develop a better understanding of the impact of sustainable soil management practices on soil biodiversity conservation and incorporate their relationship with management inputs and assessments of conservation practices.
- ACONDICIONAMIENTO TARRASENSE ASSOCIACION
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