CONFLICTING DEMANDS OF LAND USE, SOIL BI

European soil biodiversity is pivotal for delivering an array of ecosystem services such as food, fibre and biofuels, clean air and drinking water and carbon storage. However, the demand of goods to be delivered is greater than the amount of soil surface available. Cultivation of energy plants causes major land-use changes, adding a new and unexplored dimension to the traditional conflict of using land for food-production versus nature conservation. SOILSERVICE, funded by the EU 7th framework programme, will investigate different intensities of land usage, threats to soil biodiversity and related ecosystem services, as well as possibilities to conserve and restore soil biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. The biodiversity and ecosystem services is studied at multiple sites in regions that will represent a climatic gradient of moisture and temperature and with differences in soil organic matter. SOILSERVICE studies replicated field sites across Europe (identified according to the CORINE land cover system) to compare within and between a variety of soil and climate conditions.
This project examines how soil biodiversity can be protected and how the resulting ecosystem functions can be maximally exploited in an era when an increasing human population stretches the use of ecosystems to extremes. Furthermore, SOILSERVICE analyses soil usage and management scenarios and identify best practice, which will reconcile agronomists and nature conservationists, two major opposite stakeholder groups with contrasting approaches and perspectives of how to manage and use terrestrial ecosystems. Project home page: http://www.kem.ekol.lu.se/soilservice/index.html