Climate change has been a topical subject for decades. This has led to concerted efforts, at a global level, channelled towards combating its adverse effects. This has resulted in the consequential ...adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the setting of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 which obliges States Parties to incorporate climate change measures into national policies. The government of Zambia has adopted, amongst others, the National Policy on Climate Change (NPCC) 2016 which has led to ongoing discussions and consultations on the drafting of the Climate Change Bill. The measures on climate change mitigation, though laudable, are bereft of provisions that are specifically aimed at soil protection. Soil protection thrives, in part, on proper soil use which can help to mitigate climate change. Unfortunately, Zambia's legal and policy frameworks have not adequately protected the soil which omission potentially exacerbates the effects of climate change. Of grave concern is the failure to recognise the inter-relatedness of soil protection and climate change which necessitates ingraining provisions on soil protection provisions in climate change mitigation measures.
In this article, the author argues that the absence of specific provisions on soil protection in Zambia's climate change law and policy militates against the protection of the soil thereby exacerbating climate change effects.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Since soil biodiversity sustains above-ground life, the European Union (EU) has recently announced its new Soil Strategy to better protect soil ecosystems as part of the Biodiversity Strategy for ...2030. Also, the EU's Farm to Fork Strategy and the Zero Pollution Action Plan aim for soil protection. However, the status of soil biodiversity protection has not been comprehensively assessed. Therefore, we explored regulatory, incentive-based and knowledge-based instruments and strategic policy documents at the EU and national levels to determine whether they adequately protect soil biodiversity. Our review of 507 literature references concluded that only eight EU member states explicitly address threats to soil biodiversity in 14 regulatory instruments while 13 countries mainly focus on implicit threats to soil biodiversity, whereas six countries do not consider soil biodiversity. At the EU level, current directives and regulations only tackle individual threats to soil biodiversity. An EU-wide, legally binding protection could ensure a standardised minimum level of soil biodiversity protection while preventing surging costs of not acting. The EU Soil Health Law foreseen for 2023 could couple land management practices beneficial for soil biodiversity with incentive-based instruments. Simultaneously, models should be designed to predict soil biodiversity, considering soil biodiversity's spatial and temporal heterogeneity.
Display omitted
•The EU recently announced ambitious goals to better protect soil and its ecosystems•However, soil biodiversity is not adequately protected through policy instruments•We found soil biodiversity protection best achieved as joint action at the EU level•The Soil Health Law foreseen for 2023 should prioritised gaps in national conservation•Beneficial land management practices could be tied to incentive-based instruments
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The erosion of soil falls into the class of landscape destruction processes. It disturbs to a significant extent the balance in the geo-ecosystem, thus generating the whole spectrum of negative ...geo-ecological after-effects. The protection of soils against erosion and the improvement of fertility in sloped agricultural landscapes are part of the overall environmental concern that has lately notably aggravated. This has given rise to a number of topical issues for which scientific and practical solutions are urgently required. The paper describes the state of the art in the research into the issue of the protection of soils against erosion. It discusses the regional patterns in the progress of erosion processes. The integrated agro-ecological assessment of the effect that various components of the integrated erosion protection system have on the erosion resistance and properties of soils in agricultural landscapes is outlined for the development and implementation of conservation cropping systems. The study is based on the results of the long-term stationary and expeditionary field research that addressed the following issues: the natural conditions of the territory and the development of erosion processes as a result of snowmelt and rain water run-off as well as artificial sprinkling. The research was carried out using a combination of geomorphological, cartographic and pedomorphological analysis methods and approaches. By modelling rainfalls on typical eroded chernozem soils in combination with different agricultural crop growing technologies, the quantitative characteristics have been determined for the resulting erosion losses. These characteristics are needed to make long-term forecasts of the development of erosion processes in agricultural land areas in the context of intensifying exogenic processes. The tested soil-protecting agronomic technologies (subsurface blade tillage to a depth of 10–12 cm with simultaneous slitting to a depth of 40 cm, subsurface blade tillage to a depth of 20–22 cm) have demonstrated their high erosion prevention efficiency. They have reduced the surface run-off by a factor of 1.3–2.3, the soil loss by a factor of 1.9–12.7 in comparison to the traditional ploughing to a depth of 20–22 cm. Accordingly, the indices and conditions of the surface run-off water infiltration into the soil are also optimised with these techniques.
The dimensions of soil security McBratney, Alex; Field, Damien J.; Koch, Andrea
Geoderma,
January 2014, 2014, 2014-01-00, 20140101, Volume:
213
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Soil security, an overarching concept of soil motivated by sustainable development, is concerned with the maintenance and improvement of the global soil resource to produce food, fibre and fresh ...water, contribute to energy and climate sustainability, and to maintain the biodiversity and the overall protection of the ecosystem. Security is used here for soil in the same sense that it is used widely for food and water. It is argued that soil has an integral part to play in the global environmental sustainability challenges of food security, water security, energy sustainability, climate stability, biodiversity, and ecosystem service delivery. Indeed, soil has the same existential status as these issues and should be recognized and highlighted similarly. The concept of soil security is multi-dimensional. It acknowledges the five dimensions of (1) capability, (2) condition, (3) capital, (4) connectivity and (5) codification, of soil entities which encompass the social, economic and biophysical sciences and recognize policy and legal frameworks. The soil security concept is compared with the cognate, but more limited, notions of soil quality, health and protection.
•Society's sustainability is facing six existential global environmental challenges.•These challenges may be addressed by the new concept of soil security.•Soil security has relationships with soil quality, soil health and soil protection.•Soil security is a much wider concept framed using five dimensions.•The dimensions are soil capability, condition, capital, connectivity & codification.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
The article presents some results of a comparative analysis of the agrochemical, microbiological, and environmental properties of grape plants and soil types common in regions located on the slopes ...of the Lesser Caucasus. The objectives of this study were to assess the current state and quality of soils used for vineyards in some villages of the Ganja-Kazakh economic region, taking into account the long-term use of fertilizers and chemicals to protect plantations from various diseases for the resulting wine materials. Growing and exporting grapes is of great importance for the development of the economy of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Since it is a break-even plant, expanding the area under grapes to attract wetlands to agriculture has been an important issue for soil scientists in recent years. During the period of rapid development of viticulture in the republic, ensuring rapid harvesting and longevity of vineyards is one of the important scientific and practical tasks.
Forest ecosystems provide many ecosystem services including soil erosion prevention. Forest areas prone to soil erosion risk should be carefully determined and the appropriate management ...interventions should be designed to ensure the soil protection service of the forest ecosystems. In Turkey, the soil protection function of forests is determined by considering mainly the topographical condition (i.e., slope) of forest landscape. In this study, GIS-based Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) was developed and used to determine forest areas for soil protection function based on erosion risk factors including bedrock, crown closure, ground slope and rainfall. The priorities of the risk factors were determined using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique and the spatial data layer of each factor was used to generate the map of soil protection function for a case study area located in the city of Adıyaman, Turkey. The results indicated that the most effective factor on erosion risk was slope, followed by bedrock type. It was found that 36.25% of the study area was under low erosion risk, while 21.47% was classified as high and very high risk. On the other hand, the areas subject to soil protection function was found to be 12.05% of the area when using the classical method which was based on solo ground slope factor. Obviously, the difference (9.42%) comes from the combined use of various other erosion risk factors such as crown closure, bedrock and ground slope. The methodology presented provides decision makers with a practical and an effective prediction approach of soil erosion to develop and take necessary action for minimizing soil loss in forest ecosystems.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
A successful choice of post-mining restoration activities in dry climates may depend on relevant features related to topographic characteristics, hydrological processes and vegetation development, ...which will determine functional recovery in these ecosystems. The combination of different restoration techniques to reestablish vegetation, such as sowing and plantation, implies the interspersion of bare-soil areas with vegetated areas in early plant development stages, which may result in an associated mosaic of hydrologic functioning. In this study, we conducted a drone-based assessment to disentangle the role played by microsite-scale hydrological processes (i.e., planting hole slope, sink volume capacity, individual catchment area, Flow Length Index) promoted by restoration actions in soil protection and vegetation development on the hillside scale. Based on two contrasting restoration scenarios (Steep hillside and Smooth hillside), the different applied restoration treatments conditioned the microtopographic processes on the planting hole scale and, therefore, resource redistribution. The main results showed higher planting hole functionality on the smooth hillsides than on steep hillside, which resulted in greater water availability and bigger vegetation patches.
By addressing the role of hydrological processes on the microsite scale, our study contributes substantially to prior knowledge on the relevant factors for ecosystem development and post-mining restoration success. It also demonstrates that high-resolution drone images can be a very useful tool for monitoring restoration actions, especially in large, inaccessible and unstable restored areas.
Display omitted
•High-resolution images prove very effective in assessing restoration actions.•Hillside topographic slope strongly influences microsite-scale processes.•Effectiveness of planting holes as sinks varies among restoration scenarios.•Hydrological processes differently interact to determine sink functionality.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
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 m2/MW (3.5 m2/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 28 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.
Display omitted
•The artificial land generated by wind power stations is substantial.•New access road construction is land-consuming.•Milder topography minimizes land take at a fine scale.•Mediterranean natural areas and mountains are mostly affected by wind harnessing.•Conflicts emerge in nature conservation vs renewables deployment policies.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
PDF
