Soil & Water Res., 2022, 17(1):1-14 | DOI: 10.17221/136/2021-SWR

An overview of a land evaluation in the context of ecosystem servicesReview

Jaroslava Janků ORCID...*,1, Jan Jehlička2, Kristina Heřmanová1, Daniel Toth3, Mansoor Maitah4, Josef Kozák1, Jan Vopravil5, Radim Vácha5, Karel Jacko6, Tomáš Herza7
1 Department of Soil Science and Soil Protection, Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
2 Department of Environmental Geosciences, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
3 Department of Economics, University College of Business in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
4 Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
5 Research Institute for Soil and Water Conservation, Prague, Czech Republic
6 Agrio ZS, Limited Liability Company, Hovorčovice, Czech Republic
7 Hydrosoft Veleslavín, Limited Liability Company, Prague, Czech Republic

The environment is changing quickly and it is ever more burdened in connection with the greater needs of human society. This fact has increased efforts to improve the management of land and natural resources and the necessity to evaluate them. Land valuations become more important as the land consumption increases. Soil needs to be evaluated in the whole context of how its quality is affected and the values it provides. The concept of ecosystem services offers this holistic view. This paper defines ecosystem services (ES), the various linkages between soil properties, their functions and benefits, the assessment of soil quality using indicators and then briefly mentions EU environmental assessment methods and terms used in the context of ES. The article also mentions frameworks with which to assess and evaluate the soil quality that can be divided into two groups. The first group is comprised of a framework of indicators that describe the current state of the soil system assessment for evaluating the quality of the agricultural land. This is based on a detailed measurement of the terrain, a statistical analysis of soil databases or processing the status of specific threats to the soil. The second group is comprised of a framework of indicators focused on changes in the soil quality and applied soil management. These frameworks deal with the productivity of the soil in various systems of farming, compare agricultural systems or discuss the advantages of soil biota as indicators of soil quality in detail. Many of the designs of the soil quality indicators focus on the soil management in the context of a single discipline such as agriculture or water pollution. There are concepts for considering the soil quality in regional planning.

Keywords: BOKS index; soil functions; soil quality; SQUID index; sustainable soil management

Published: January 17, 2022  Show citation

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Janků J, Jehlička J, Heřmanová K, Toth D, Maitah M, Kozák J, et al.. An overview of a land evaluation in the context of ecosystem services. Soil & Water Res. 2022;17(1):1-14. doi: 10.17221/136/2021-SWR.
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