Soil erosion forms a major threat to European soil resources. Although soil is a vital and largely non-renewable resource, it has not been the subject of comprehensive EU action so far. A thematic strategy for soil protection, which recognises soil erosion as one of the major threats, has currently been placed high on Europe’s political Agenda. Assessing and monitoring soil erosion is needed to...

Executive Summary Soil quality is an account of the soil's ability to provide ecosystem and social services through its capacities to perform its functions under changing conditions (after Tóth et al. 2007.) The concept of soil quality expressed by this definition allows practical applications with regards to targeted social and/or ecosystem services, including agri-environmental services. The ...

If all resources are harnessed, and adequate measures taken to minimize soil degradation, sufficient food to feed the population in 2020 can be produced, and probably sufficient for a few billion more. These were the key conclusions from a Discussion Meeting held at the Royal Society in London in December 1996. The meeting entitled ‘Land resources: on the edge of the Malthusian precipice?’ atte...

Soil sealing (loss of soil resources due to extensive land covering for the purpose of house building, road construction etc.) and subsequent soil landscape pattern changes constitute typical environmental problems in many places worldwide. Previous studies concentrated on soil sealing in urbanized regions, whereas rural areas have not been given sufficient attention. Accordingly, this paper st...

Soil classification systems organize soil variability into useful groupings that can be identified by field investigation and documented in soil survey, and form the basis for the exchange and extension of soil science research and soil resources management. Fuzzy clustering analysis may be used whenever a composite classification of soil incorporates multiple parameters. In this paper, seventy...

At national level, numerous institutions are active in the many fields involving soil information issues, for example: Ministries of Agriculture and Environment, Agency for Environment Protection and Technical Services, university soil science departments, Experimental Institute for Soil Study and Conservation, centres of the National Research Council, as CNR-IRPI). The National Committee for S...

In recent years, most of the regions in the world are exposed to degradation and erosion caused by increasing population and over use of land resources. The understanding of the most important factors on soil erosion and sediment yield are the main keys for decision making and planning. In this study, the sediment yield and soil erosion were estimated and the priority of different soil erosion ...

Land degradation impacts on several critical environmental issues such as food security, diminishing quality and quantity of fresh water resources, preservation of natural resources, loss of biodiversity, and global climate change. Land degradation is responsible for soil erosion and can eventually lead to desertification. The International Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) defines des...

a State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, PR China b Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, PR China c Agri-Environmental Services Branch (AESB), Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), 960 Carling Av. Ottawa, ON, Canad...

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau...