Policy Briefs
Rewetting of drained peatlands provides permanent and fast GHG mitigation
Kristiina Lång, Daniël van de Craats, Henri Honkanen, Lars Elsgaard, Rudi Hessel, Hanna Kekkonen, Tuula Larmola, Jens Leifeld, Poul Erik Lærke, Andres Rodriguez, Sanna Saarnio, Junbin Zhao
Rewetting of previously drained agricultural peat soil coupled with continued cultivation in the form of paludiculture is not widely practiced, and experiments are needed to understand its environmental impacts.
In the INSURE project we measured GHG emissions and crop yields in rewetted agricultural fields.
From Risk to Resilience: Policy challenges for Soil Erosion Control
Elmar M. Schmaltz, Lisbeth L. Johannsen
Water-induced soil erosion is a growing concern in the EU, with climate change projections indicating a potential 13-23 % rise in erosion rates.
The variability of soil erosion modelling techniques highlights the need for standardisation of data sets and harmonisation of model parameterisation to allow valid comparisons of policy measures.
The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has a limited effect in decreasing erosion risk, as the voluntary measures are often not well targeted to the identified erosionprone areas.
Policymakers should advocate for targeted erosion mitigation measures and elaborate more appropriate assessment protocols including sediment connectivity modelling to improve accuracy in erosion risk assessments.
A framework for setting soil health targets and thresholds in agricultural soils
Amanda Matson, Maria Fantappiè, Grant A. Campbell, Jorge F. Miranda-Vélez, Jack H. Faber, Lucas Carvalho Gomes, Rudi Hessel, Marcos Lana, Stefano Mocali, Pete Smith, David Robinson, Antonio Bispo, Fenny van Egmond, Saskia Keesstra, Nicolas P.A. Saby, Bozena Smreczak, Claire Froger, Azamat Suleymanov, and Claire Chenu
Soil health is defined through soil indicators, which are assessed using targets and/or thresholds. The challenge is that targets and thresholds are highly site-, managementand climate-specific, and there is not yet a validated assessment system with that level of detail.
With policies worldwide being established to promote soil health, there is an urgent need for the development of a system to assess soils.
We explored four approaches to setting targets and thresholds. Based on stakeholder feedback of the approaches, collected in two webinars (EJP SOIL 2023) and case studies of three approaches, we developed a framework that facilitates both choosing the most appropriate target/threshold method for a given context, and using targets and thresholds to promote soil health.