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Abstract: Soil is one of the most important and most complex natural resources, but current developments (urbanisation, erosion and climate change) increasingly threaten this valuable resource in Europe and worldwide. The main objective of this paper is to introduce how changes in soil quality were modelled in the SENSOR project through two indicators: soil carbon content and soil water erosion. Indicators were calculated using state variables and model variables that were mainly derived from the CLUE model which predicts land use change in response to policy scenarios. In the case of erosion, accuracy of the calculations was evaluated by comparing GIS data with the results of the PESERA project. The PESERA and SENSOR models predicted comparable soil loss for the first year in the NUTS-X regions of Europe that were analysed. The higher resolution national soil-loss prediction USLE map largely overestimated the amount of soil loss compared to the PESERA and the SENSOR models in the NUTS-X regions of Hungary. This discrepancy may result from technical or methodological differences such as the spatial reference framework (NUTS-X regions), spatial resolution or levels of data aggregation. The soil organic carbon loss predictions for the NUTS-X regions of Europe are displayed on maps and background data are given in tables. The greatest decreases in soil carbon content may be expected in some regions of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, south-eastern UK and eastern Germany. The greatest increases in soil carbon content may be expected in central and eastern parts of the UK, in Ireland, in northern and central Sweden and Estonia, in Greece, in central and southern Italy, in the island of Sardinia and in some regions of Spain. As erosion strongly reduces soil productivity these predictions have not only environmental but also socio-economic implications. The results presented in this paper could be used at EU level to locate regions where negative changes in soil quality can be expected. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

According to some European Institutions (European Environment Agency, Commission of the European Communities), Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) could be a better tool to assist natural resource protection in the context of land use planning than when used only for assessing specific projects. Environmental assessment of planning instruments allows the comparison of different alternatives and to scope the analysis and evaluation of relevant impacts when developing projects in the alternatives selected. This paper develops a minimum indicator set useful to evaluate natural resources quality at municipality level as a basis for assessing environmental impacts derived from land use planning instruments and from specific projects in the Valencian region, a representative area of the European Mediterranean Region. Using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), a minimum set of 12 indicators which referred to relevant natural resources (air, water, soil and biodiversity) was defined and used to assess the resources quality of different municipalities of the Valencian region, following a value-function based approach. The results obtained were very similar to those obtained in another study done in the same area that applied a broader set of indicators. These results and the potential reduction in costs estimated show the usefulness of the minimum set of indicators defined in this work for evaluating resources quality. As a demonstration exercise, the indicator set was applied to three municipalities representative of the different land use conflicts and environmental problems of the Valencian region, in order to assess the environmental impacts on natural resources that could be produced from the implementation of a hypothetic urban-industrial expansion plan, a usual land use pattern that has occurred in the European Mediterranean Region in the lasts decades. The results obtained show that coastal municipalities are better alternatives to implement an urban-industrial expansion than inland and intermediate municipalities in terms of environmental impacts although the loss of high productivity soils must be avoided. Given that the environmental issues considered are representative of the European Mediterranean Region, it follows that the approach developed in this work can be useful to predict environmental impacts on natural resources from planning instruments in the whole region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]