Extract

INTRODUCTION

The EU Soil Strategy (EC 2006a) describes the European Union (EU) soil policy in general terms and the draft Soil Framework Directive (SFD; EC 2006b) proposes the legally binding elements of that policy. In these documents, the EU Commission identifies 8 main threats to soil. The EU FP6 project ENVASSO (Environmental Assessment of Soil for Monitoring) aimed to design a single, integrated, and operational set of EU‐wide criteria and indicators to provide the basis for a harmonized, comprehensive soil and land information system for monitoring in Europe. Here, a proposal is made for a set of suitable indicators for monitoring the decline in soil biodiversity (Bispo et al. 2007). These indicators were selected both from a literature review and an inventory of national monitoring programs. Decline in soil biodiversity was defined as the reduction of forms of life living in soils (both in terms of quantity and variety) and of related functions, causing a deterioration of one or more soil functions or ecosystem services. Whereas literature review allows the identification of about 100 possible indicators, the inventory of existing monitoring networks shows that few indicators are actually measured.

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