Evaluating impact on quality of soil

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Scope

Does the option affect the acidification, contamination or salinity of soil, and soil erosion rates?

Definition

Through deposition via rain, air pollutants and their acids accumulate in soils and the transgression of critical loads leads to an irreversable destruction of eco systems. Salinity on the other hand can improve soil structure, but it becomes a problem when enough salts accumulate in the root zone to negatively affect plant growth. Excess salts in the root zone hinder plant roots from withdrawing water from surrounding soil. This lowers the amount of water available to the plant, regardless of the amount of water actually in the root zone. Saline irrigation water contains dissolved salts. In much of the arid and semi-arid areas most of the salts present in irrigation water are chlorides, sulfates, carbonates, and bicarbonates of calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium.

Besides soil contamination, soil may be detached and moved by water, wind or tillage. This so called soil erosion has been occurring for some 450 million years. This 'natural' soil erosion by the action of water or wind is called 'background' (or 'geological') soil erosion. In general, background erosion removes soil at roughly the same rate as soil is formed. But 'accelerated' soil erosion - loss of soil at a much faster rate than it is formed - is a far more recent problem, which results of human activities, such as overgrazing or unsuitable cultivation practices. Such activities leave the land unprotected and vulnerable, which leeds to rainfalls or windstorms detaching, transporting, and deposting the affected soil and thereby possibly depositing it a long distance away. Accelerated soil erosion by water or wind may affect both agricultural areas and the natural environment. And it has impacts both on-site (at the place where the soil is detached) and off-site (wherever the eroded soil is deposited). More recently still, the use of powerful agricultural implements has, in some parts of the world, led to damaging amounts of soil moving downslope merely under the action of gravity, the so-called tillage erosion. Besides agriculteral use, another reason for anthropogenic erosion is deforestation. Afforestation prevents erosion and landslides, while deforestation oftentimes leads to sudden exposure of bare soil which then easily falls victim to erosion.

Through anthropogenic soil contamination as well as through soil erosion, fertile soil may get unusable for a long time or even disappear forever. Because soil is formed slowly, it is essentially a finite resource.

Result

Indicators:

There are no Eurostat Structural Indicators directly related to this key question.

The following Eurostat Sustainable Development Indicators are relevant to address the key question:

• Percentage of built-up areas

Additional Links:

European Environment Agency Indicators

EEA Soil Indicators

• Progress in management of contaminated sites

covers inter alia

• Soil-polluting activities from localised sources (Data covering several EU countries for 2002/03)
• Annual expenditures for contaminated sites remediation in selected countries (EUR per capita and year), partly estimations (Data covering 1999 and 2000)
• Progress in the management of contaminated sites for selected European countries: degree of completeness of management steps compared to estimated total effort (100 %) (Data covering several EU countries for 2002)

See also

• IA TOOLS
• UK National Focal Centre on critical loads
• Definition and explanation of critical loads

References

This text is for information only and is not designed to interpret or replace any reference documents.