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Soils perform many functions that are vital to societies, among which their capability to regulate global climate has received much attention over the past decades. An assessment of the extent to which soils perform a specific function is not only important to appropriately value their current capacity, but also to make well-informed decisions about how and where to change soil management to align the delivered soil functions with societal demands. To obtain an overview of the capacity of soils to perform different functions, accurate and easy-to-use models are necessary. A problem with most currently-available models is that data requirements often exceed data availability, while generally a high level of expert knowledge is necessary to apply these models. Therefore, we developed a qualitative model to assess how agricultural soils function with respect to climate regulation. The model is driven by inputs about agricultural management practices, soil properties and environmental conditions. To reduce data requirements on stakeholders, the 17 input variables are classified into either (1) three classes: low, medium and high or (2) the presence or absence of a management practice. These inputs are combined using a decision tree with internal integration rules to obtain an estimate of the magnitude of N2O emissions and carbon sequestration. These two variables are subsequently combined into an estimate of the capacity of a soil to perform the climate regulation function. The model was tested using data from long-term field experiments across Europe. This showed that the model is generally able to adequately assess this soil function across a range of environments under different management practices. In a next step, this model will be combined with models to assess other soil functions (soil biodiversity, primary productivity, nutrient cycling and water regulation and purification). This will allow the assessment of trade-offs between these soil functions for agricultural land across Europe., Frontiers in Environmental Science, 7, ISSN:2296-665X

Over the past decades, average global wheat yields have increased by about 250 %, mainly due to the cultivation of high-yielding wheat cultivars. This selection process not only affected aboveground parts of plants, but in some cases also reduced root biomass, with potentially large consequences for the amount of organic carbon (OC) transferred to the soil. To study the effect of wheat breeding for high-yielding cultivars on subsoil OC dynamics, two old and two new wheat cultivars from the Swiss wheat breeding program were grown for one growing season in 1.5 m deep lysimeters and pulse labeled with 13CO2 to quantify the amount of assimilated carbon that was transferred belowground and can potentially be stabilized in the soil. The results show that although the old wheat cultivars with higher root biomass transferred more assimilated carbon belowground compared to more recent cultivars, no significant differences in net rhizodeposition were found between the different cultivars. As a consequence, the long-term effect of wheat cultivar selection on soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks will depend on the amount of root biomass that is stabilized in the soil. Our results suggest that the process of wheat selection for high-yielding cultivars resulted in lower amounts of belowground carbon translocation, with potentially important effects on SOC stocks. Further research is necessary to quantify the long-term importance of this effect., Biogeosciences, 17 (11), ISSN:1726-4170

With increasing societal demands for food security and environmental sustainability on land, the question arises: to what extent do synergies and trade‐offs exist between soil functions and how can they be measured across Europe? To address this challenge, we followed the functional land management approach and assessed five soil functions: primary productivity, water regulation and purification, climate regulation, soil biodiversity and nutrient cycling. Soil, management and climate data were collected from 94 sites covering 13 countries, five climatic zones and two land‐use types (arable and grassland). This dataset was analysed using the Soil Navigator, a multicriteria decision support system developed to assess the supply of the five soil functions simultaneously. Most sites scored high for two to three soil functions, demonstrating that managing for multifunctionality in soil is possible but that local constraints and trade‐offs do exist. Nutrient cycling, biodiversity and climate regulation were less frequently delivered at high capacity than the other two soil functions. Using correlation and co‐occurrence analyses, we also found that synergies and trade‐offs between soil functions vary among climatic zones and land‐use types. This study provides a new framework for monitoring soil quality at the European scale where both the supply of soil functions and their interactions are considered., European Journal of Soil Science, 72 (4), ISSN:1351-0754, ISSN:1365-2389

Agricultural decision support systems (DSSs) are mostly focused on increasing the supply of individual soil functions such as, e.g., primary productivity or nutrient cycling, while neglecting other important soil functions, such as, e.g., water purification and regulation, climate regulation and carbon sequestration, soil biodiversity, and habitat provision. Making right management decisions for long-term sustainability is therefore challenging, and farmers and farm advisors would greatly benefit from an evidence-based DSS targeted for assessing and improving the supply of several soil functions simultaneously. To address this need, we designed the Soil Navigator DSS by applying a qualitative approach to multi-criteria decision modeling using Decision Expert (DEX) integrative methodology. Multi-criteria decision models for the five main soil functions were developed, calibrated, and validated using knowledge of involved domain experts and knowledge extracted from existing datasets by data mining. Subsequently, the five DEX models were integrated into a DSS to assess the soil functions simultaneously and to provide management advices for improving the performance of prioritized soil functions. To enable communication between the users and the DSS, we developed a user-friendly computer-based graphical user interface, which enables users to provide the required data regarding their field to the DSS and to get textual and graphical results about the performance of each of the five soil functions in a qualitative way. The final output from the DSS is a list of soil mitigation measures that the end-users could easily apply in the field in order to achieve the desired soil function performance. The Soil Navigator DSS has a great potential to complement the Farm Sustainability Tools for Nutrients included in the Common Agricultural Policy 2021–2027 proposal adopted by the European Commission. The Soil Navigator has also a potential to be spatially upgraded to assist decisions on which soil functions to prioritize in a specific region or member state. Furthermore, the Soil Navigator DSS could be used as an educational tool for farmers, farm advisors, and students, and its potential should be further exploited for the benefit of farmers and the society as a whole., Frontiers in Environmental Science, 7, ISSN:2296-665X