Science Snack Cards
The advantages of plain language summaries extend to convey complex scientific outputs and outcomes to a wide range of stakeholders.Science communication through plain language summaries is now increasingly valued as a unique expertise skill by authors. Although translating scientific content into plain language summaries might appear straightforward, experienced authors who are skilled in communicating complex scientific information to their peers may find it difficult to communicate their work to a wider audience with little scientific background. This is evident from the fact that plain language summaries were only included in fewer agricultural and soil related journals, making them a somewhat unusual feature! To address this difficulty we developed, “Science snack cards” which are introduced to present complex research outputs generated in European Joint Programme SOIL in simple and easily digestible formats to overcome the knowledge gap stakeholder groups not familiar with scientific literature face. So far 38 Science snack cards have been produced to highlight key results and the main take home message aimed to enhance communication between researchers and wider stakeholder groups (general public, decision makers, scientists outside discipline). Science snack cards used in national stakeholder workshops in Austria and Denmark received great reception. In addition, EJPSOIL WP7 provides guidelines and templates to researchers for creating such cards to promote publishing science in a simple way and in regional languages to create awareness on soil health and management among national stakeholder groups.
A portable X-Ray device for rapid organic waste analysis
Is there a simple way to analyze organic waste?
A portable X-ray device is the answer! This device enables precise testing in the field within minutes at low cost for a large range of elements.
Barriers and opportunities of soil knowledge to address soil challenges.
Survey in 20 countries: 314 stakeholders.
Aim to identify important barriers and challenges currently affecting soil knowledge but also assess opportunities to overcome these obstacles.
Soil Organic Carbon under Conservation Agriculture.
Evaluating trade-offs and synergies between soil C sequestration, nitrous oxide, methane and nitrate losses as affected by soil management options aimed at increasing soil C storage.
Adoption of climate-smart soil management practices and water regulation functions in Europe.
Covering the land with living plants works.
Keeping the soil continuously covered with living plants stimulates soil life and carbon storage. Essential in developing a good soil structure.
Carbon farming schemes - Analysis and online Map.
The Road4Schemes project has gathered an inventory containing 160 European carbon farming schemes. Some focus exclusively on carbon sequestration while others support a wider number og ecosystem services.
Carbon turnover in soil is not a one-way street.
When organic matter is introduced to soils, a part of its carbon is stored whereas another part is respirated by microbes and lost to the athmosphere.
Does soil health improve under multi-cropping system?
Multi-cropping systems play an important role in improving the quality of soil properties. Multi-cropping reduces nutrient leaching into deeper layers of the soil, as well as the abundance of pathogens and weeds.
Empowering environmental research: NLP for metadata extraction
NLP can help categorize documents by their subjects, find gaps in knowledge, create databases, and identify connections between ideas
Equilibrium in Soil Carbon Storage - the path is short.
Straw incorporation and cover crops promotes SOC. Effect of straw addition and rye grass cover crop on SOC sequestration peaks after 10-15 years when a new equilibrium between input and output of C is reached.
How to evaluate a land? - In the context of ecosystem services.
Soil needs to be evaluated in the whole context of its quality and value it provides - concept of ecosystem services offers this holistic view.
An inventory of main soil practices for managing european agroecosystems.
An overview of innovative soil management practices at European scale is needed. The i-SoMPE project provided a complete inventory of innovative soil management practices (SMPs).
Land use and soil types affect pore network, SOC retention.
Land use and soil types affect macropore network, organic carbon and nutrients retention. Highest macroporosity along the soil profile in grassland, followed by arable land and forests.
Liming's impact on soil greenhouse gas fluxes.
Liming exerts a strong impact on microbial communities involved in the production and consumption of GHG emissions. This strong relationship processes can be used to identify strategies to reduce the emissions.
The legacy of microbial inoculants in agroecosystems.
Microbial inoculations can influence agroecosystem functions in multiple ways and show great opportunities to increase services such as climate change mitigation and adaptation.
A comprehensive european dataset of agricultural experiments.
Agricultural Longterm Experiments (LTES) are crucial for research. They monitor long-term effects of land management and pedo- climatic conditions on crop production and soil resources.
Plant-soil synchrony in nutrient cycles.
An integrated framework to design sustainable agrosystems.
The proposed framework is using the knowledge on how natural ecosystems have a synchronized biochemical functioning, in order to create more sustainable agrosystems.
Policy challenges for soil erosion control.
The survey found that the used models for soil erosion, require changes that include sediment connectivity and soil erosion measures. These changes would improve the erosion risk assessment and implementation of targeted mitigation measures.
The power of pyrolysis
Biochar quality and yield for soil carbon sequestration in practice.
Quality assessment of meta-analyses on soil organic carbon.
Urgent need for improved meta-analysis on the effects of organic agriculture, biochar, fertilization, or crop diversification on SOC.
A review of existing soil monitoring systems.
This study addresses main questions when developing a soil monitoring programme and underlines possible ways to harmonize national programmes with EU Soil Observatory
Increasing root carbon input to agricultural soils by variety selection.
Choosing varieties that produce more root biomass can lead to additional carbon input in soils. This might help carbon accrual but could also reduce yields
Soil Organic Carbon models need independent time-series validation for reliable prediction.
Efforts to maintain datasets are imperative for accurate SOC projections and predictions.
Soil Carbon - the blind spot of European national GHG Inventories.
As long as soil carbon is not properly monitored, it will not be possible to identify the priority areas where new removals can be targeted and incentivized.
Soil compaction boosts greenhouse gas N2O.
Traffic and animal-induced compaction can lead to an increased N2O emissions by decreasing soil oxygen supply. How this happens is discussed in this review.
No "One-technique-fits-all": multiple techniques should be used for sound data analysis.
Soil moisture is causing problems for soil analysis.
The current ProbeField project is working on these issues, including testing methods to remove moisture from soil data and developing better calibration models for field measurements.
Soil science in higher education across Europe.
More active teaching and learning approaches and digitalisation are needed To solve complex sustainability problems, the demand for soil science and land management expertise will increase.
Spatial structure of pedodiversity.
Pedodiversity (PD) is the variation of soil properties within an area. Deeper knowledge of PD is important for understanding the functioning of soil properties and their relationships in the changing environment.
The elephant in the room? Improved descriptions of soil hydrology in crop models.
Models are powerful tools to assess impacts of management and climate on water balance, solute transport and crop yields. It is important that hydrological processes in the soil-crop system are accurately modelled.
Different tillage treatments.
In which way are they influencing soil inhabitants and soil properties?
Unmasking adaption of tree root structure.
Agroforestry trees root deeper: The potential volume of water and nutrient intake was enlarged, which might enhance the resilience of the combined production systems.
Ways to increase maize grain yield.
Does urease inhibitors and biological preparations reduce reliance on nitrogen fertilisers and improve maize grain yield?
A participatory meta data catalogue for sharing data.
The catalogue provides an overview and allows better findability of relevant authoritative and research soil datasets that can be used by the different soil research projects.
Weeds
An insidious enemy or a tool to boost mycorrhization in cropping systems?
When does soil carbon help climate?
Carbon stock, carbon sink, carbon storage - are they the same thing? And does fixing carbon in the soil, for example, by building up soil organic carbon, automatically lead to climate change mitigation?