Europe finally "gets" SOILS?

The European Commission has admitted it has "big knowledge gaps" about the behaviour of soil under different land uses and climate change. It's admission comes in the following tender announcement:

(Thanks to Tony Lovell for this lead)
.............

Tender: Interrelations between soil and climate change
Date: 2007-05-14

The European Commission's Environment Directorate-General has published a call for tenders for a review of existing information on the interrelations between soil and climate change, which was pre-published as 'interactions between soil protection and climate change'.

Through a very comprehensive literature review and expert judgement, the objective of this contract is to build a robust understanding of the interactions between soil under different land uses (agriculture, forestry, wetlands etc.) and climate change in four major areas where big knowledge gaps have been identified. This will allow, in a second stage, improved exploitation of these interactions in order to protect soil functions and combat climate change.

This implies that the contractor collects and compares the results of existing pan-European and other relevant models dedicated to the interaction between soil and climate change, so as to provide policy-relevant information concerning the long-term effects on the soil carbon pool of the increase in global temperatures, as well as the measures that can be adopted to fight the decline of soil organic matter.


Contact person
For further information, please contact:

European Commission
Directorate-General Environment
Markets Team, F.2 - Finance BU-5 00/169
B-1049 Brussels
Tel. +32 2 296 0008
Fax: +32 2 299 4449
E-mail: Contact

To see the full details of the call, please consult the following web address:
http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:111344-2007:TEXT:EN:HTML

On 22.9.2006, the European Commission adopted the Thematic Strategy on the protection of soil. It includes a proposal for a Soil Framework Directive aiming at strengthening, inter alia, the role of soil in climate change mitigation. In the strategy, the Commission has announced that it 'will build a robust approach to address the interaction between soil protection and climate change from the viewpoints of research, economy and rural development so that policies in these areas are mutually supportive.' It is against this background that the Commission, with this contract, intends to assess the actual contribution of the protection of soil to climate change mitigation and the effects of climate change on soil productivity, including the depletion of soil organic matter.
Through a very comprehensive literature review and expert judgement, the objective of this contract is to build a robust understanding of the interactions between soil under different land uses (agriculture, forestry, wetlands etc.) and climate change in 4 major areas where big knowledge gaps have been identified. This will allow, in a second stage, to better exploit these interactions in order to protect soil functions and combat climate change.
This implies that the contractor collects and compares the results of existing pan-European and other relevant models dedicated to the interaction between soil and climate change, so as to provide policy-relevant information concerning the long-term effects on the soil carbon pool of the increase in global temperatures as well as the measures that can be adopted to fight the decline of soil organic matter. As some Community and national policies currently in place may hinder the implementation of appropriate measures to maintain the soil carbon pool and reverse the decline of soil organic matter, the study will include an analysis of such negative incentives. This study does not imply the development of new research projects or the generation of new research data or any actual measurement of organic matter in the soil.