Planning of a European level erosion monitoring system in the ENVASSO project

Abstract

After the European Commission published the Communication titled: „Towards a Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection”, in 22nd of September 2006 they adopted the Thematic Strategy and also published a directive about establishing a framework for the protection of soil. The official Soil Communication in 2002 identifies eight principle threats to soils of Europe such as erosion, organic matter loss, soil contamination, soil sealing, soil compaction, decline in soil biodiversity, salinisation, floods and landslides. Accelerated erosion is one of the most harmful processes (estimated annual cost is 0.7–14.0 billion euro). The common needs of trans-national soil protection resulted many European wide research projects. One of them is the ENVironmental ASsessment of Soil for mOnitoring (ENVASSO) with 37 participants (including four Hungarian institutes) from the enlar- ged EU and Candidate Countries. The project will design and test a single, integrated, EU-wide and operational set of measurable criteria and indicators as a basis for a harmonised comprehensive European soil and land information system. The structure of the project is five working groups, with the following tasks: indicator and criteria selection, inventory and monitoring, database design and selection, create a manual of procedures, and prototype evaluation for all the major threats. The selected key issues and candidate indicators for soil erosion (keeping the top three from many indicators) are: estimated soil loss by water erosion (rill, inter-rill, gully), wind erosion and tillage erosion (loss of soil by tillage practices, land levelling and crop harvest) (t ha-1 yr-1). It should be noted, that while the geographical density is 77633 monitoring sites in Europe, then the coverage of the erosion indicators is only 0,01% of the monitoring sites, almost all the data are estimated. Hopefully better scientific information will ensure that soil is managed well at local, regional, and continental levels as well.