Examining links between soil management, soil health, and public benefits in agricultural landscapes: An Australian perspective

Soil “Ecosystem” Services and Natural Capital: Critical Appraisal of Research on Uncertain Ground

“…After about 2009, though, a steadily growing number of authors Bennett et al, 2010;Bristow et al, 2010;Dominati et al, 2010a,b;Robinson and Lebron, 2010;Martins and Angers, 2015) manifested increasing interest in determining how a reflection in terms of the services of soils to human populations could help society address a number of pressing questions causing public concern. With few exceptions, this research effort has not been framed at all in the context of the various ecosystems or biomes envisaged by ecologists, or in any landscape context either, but has focused instead exclusively on soils.…”

“…Another relative downside of the concept of function is related to the fact that not all that soils have to offer to human populations is necessarily beneficial to them (Zhang et al, 2007;Lyytimäki et al, 2008;Redford and Adams, 2009;Bennett et al, 2010;Dunn, 2010;Power, 2012;Ango et al, 2014;Shackleton et al, 2016). Significant negative effects of soils on climate change, through the release of greenhouse gases (Burgin et al, 2013), are acknowledged, as is also the fact that, while they supply nutrients to crops, soils also do the same to countless weeds that eventually require the use of large amounts of herbicides to eliminate them.…”

“…For some parameters, this assumption may indeed be approximately satisfied, whenever sufficient data exist linking given land use practices to ecosystem services, but in general, this is likely to be the exception rather than the rule. In many situations of interest, solid data are entirely lacking and one has to fall back on model predictions (Caride et al, 2012) or speculations about "anticipated" changes (Bennett et al, 2010). In some cases, even these speculations are missing.…”

Soil health: looking for suitable indicators. What should be considered to assess the effects of use and management on soil health?

“…Soil organic carbon is also a key attribute in assessing soil health, generally correlating positively with crop yield (Bennett et al, 2010). The soil organic carbon affects important functional processes in soil like the storage of nutrients, mainly N, water holding capacity, and stability of aggregates (Silva and Sá-Mendonça, 2007).…”

Environmental impacts of innovative dairy farming systems aiming at improved internal nutrient cycling: A multi-scale assessment

“…This does not only include provisioning services, such as the production of food, but also regulating services such as the regulation of climate, by enhancing carbon sequestration and reducing nitrous oxide emission and ensuring an adequate water quality by enhancing the buffer and filter capacity of the soil (i.e., water purification). Many of these services are critically dependent on the underlying soil processes and soil properties (Bennet et al, 2010;EU, 2006), involving inherent fixed soil properties as well as dynamic manageable soil properties that change under the influence of soil management (Dominati et al, 2010;Powlson et al, 2011;Robinson et al, 2012).…”