Assessment of Soil Functions: An Example of Meeting Competing National and International Obligations by Harnessing Regional Differences

Abstract

The increased demand for bio based products worldwide provides an opportunity for Eastern European countries to increase their production in agriculture and forestry. At the same time, such economic development must be congruent with the European Union’s long-term climate and biodiversity objectives. As a country that is rich in bioresources, the Latvian case study is highly relevant to many other countries—especially those in Central and Eastern Europe—and faces a choice of transition pathways to meet both economic and environmental objectives. In order to assess the trade-offs between investments in the bioeconomy and the achievement of climate and biodiversity objectives, we used the Functional Land Management (FLM) framework for the quantification of the supply and demand for the primary productivity, carbon regulation and biodiversity functions. We related the supply of these three soil functions to combinations of land use and soil characteristics. The demand for the same functions were derived from European, national and regional policy objectives. Our results showed different spatial scales at which variation in demand and supply is manifested. High demand for biodiversity was associated with areas dominated by agricultural land at the local scale, while regional differences of unemployment rates and the target for GDP increases framed the demand for primary productivity. National demand for carbon regulation focused on areas dominated by forests on organic soils. We subsequently identified mismatches between the supply and demand for soil functions, and we selected spatial locations for specific land use changes and improvements in management practices to promote sustainable development of the bio-economy. Our results offer guidance to policy makers that will help them to form a national policy that will underpin management practices that are effective and tailored toward local climate conditions and national implementation pathways.

Leaf Nutrient Status of Commercially Grown Strawberries in Latvia, 2014–2022: A Possible Yield-Limiting Factor

“…Among micronutrients, horticultural crops suffer from Zn deficiency worldwide, especially in calcareous soils, but also in light sandy and peaty soils [ 41 ]. Such agricultural soils are typical for Latvia as well [ 42 ]. Studies on different strawberry cultivars and most recommendations for sufficiency levels indicated that Zn deficiencies in strawberries were associated with leaf concentrations below 20 mg kg −1 [ 9 , 17 , 18 ].…”

Ecological evaluation of soils of the mugan plain of Azerbaijan

“…A formula was suggested for calculating the ecological scores of soils, these scores were calculated on the basis of the ratio of the plant to the appearance degrees of the separate soil signs. At present, numerous studies are being carried out all over the world in this direction, where methodological approaches to assessing the ecological state of soils are being improved [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27].…”

Can farmers meet all the societal demands with the available natural resources?

“…In 1990, the restructuring process led to fundamental changes in the structure of Latvian agriculture, namely (1) changes in land ownership and (2) the redistribution of fixed assets of large collective farms to private farms (Strīķis, 1997). These changes led to the collapse of agricultural activity with a decrease in the amount of agricultural land and livestock (Valujeva et al, 2020), and the abandonment of about 11% of agricultural land (Nipers, 2019). This lasted until Latvia joined the European Union in 2004 and benefitted from support payments of the Common Agricultural Policy (Zdanovskis and Pilvere, 2015).…”

“…In a previous study (Valujeva et al, 2020), we identified the supply and demand for three soil functions relevant to Latvia's agro-climatic conditions; namely, primary productivity (PP), carbon regulation (CR), and habitat for biodiversity (BD), using European and Latvian policies to guide the quantification of demand for soil functions, and the gradient from mineral to histic soils and land use for the quantification of supply of these same soil functions. In that paper, we explained the parameterisation of the demand for PP through the combination of regional bioeconomy GDP targets and unemployment rates at the municipal level using the tabular index approach by Greiner et al (2018).…”

“…For instance, Schulte et al (2016) uncovered several pathways for context-specific optimisation of production and ecosystem services in Ireland, in support of the development of knowledge-based agri-environmental policies, which have now been adopted in the draft Agri-Food Strategy 2030 by the Government of Ireland (DAFM, 2021). Through further case studies in Ireland and Latvia, (Valujeva et al, 2020(Valujeva et al, , 2016 showed that such regionally differentiated approaches to the prioritisation of soil functions can indeed meet national targets at a national scale.…”