Finding and sharing solutions to protect our soils (RECARE)

Participatory development and testing of soil conservation measures

Solutions for sustainable soil management can only be identified, developed, and implemented successfully if the diverse needs of all stakeholders are taken into account. CDE’s activities within the RECARE project focus on creating stakeholder platforms to promote knowledge exchange and joint learning among different actors, including practitioners and scientists. Stakeholders will be involved in project activities throughout the entire project duration, for example by means of workshops. Based on knowledge pooled in this way, CDE and its research partners are developing a universally applicable methodology for assessing and valuing both the impacts of soil degradation and the effects of sustainable soil management on soil functions and ecosystem services. This methodology will then be applied in the project’s 17 case studies.

Impacts on soil functions and ecosystem services

Soil has many important functions: it regulates and stores water and nutrients, serves as a habitat and as a foundation to build on, produces biomass, and plays a prominent role in both natural and cultural history, to mention just a few. Based on these functions, soil provides ecosystem services, which have direct benefits and hence also a value. This value can vary greatly depending on how the soil is being used, and it is weighted differently by different users. For example, a farmer will consider soil fertility most important, whereas a municipal employee will be more interested in effective drainage and a minimal amount of soil being washed into the sewage system.

Developing a methodology for valuing ecosystem services

CDE is developing a methodology for measuring and valuing soil functions and ecosystem services. The main aim is to visualize impacts of soil degradation and effects of soil conservation measures as a basis for comparing the various conservation measures and quantifying their effectiveness. The methodology will build not only on economic and monetary valuation methods, but also on alternative methods that enable broader consideration of social and ecological criteria – for example by allowing users to express their preferences for cultural services without the need to specify their economic value. The methodology has to be simple and comprehensible enough that it can be used by a wide range of stakeholders in workshops. Local researchers will implement the methodology in the RECARE case study areas.

RECARE case studies

Soil has many important functions: it regulates and stores water and nutrients, serves as a habitat and as a foundation to build on, produces biomass, and plays a prominent role in both natural and cultural history, to mention just a few. Based on these functions, soil provides ecosystem services, which have direct benefits and hence also a value. This value can vary greatly depending on how the soil is being used, and it is weighted differently by different users. For example, a farmer will consider soil fertility most important, whereas a municipal employee will be more interested in effective drainage and a minimal amount of soil being washed into the sewage system.

Soil erosion by water in the Frienisberg area

Frienisberg is a hilly farming area northwest of Bern, on the Swiss Plateau. Its sloping fields are frequently damaged by soil erosion following precipitation events. Even if the area’s average annual soil erosion rate of 0.75 tonnes per hectare is fairly low, soil loss measured on individual fields has reached up to 96 tonnes per year. Mapping surveys have shown that soil loss occurs mainly in winter and on fields cropped with winter wheat. But even in summer, heavy rains can lead to severe soil loss on potato, maize, and sugar beet fields. In addition to the immediate damage in the fields, soil erosion also harms the sewage system, roads, and buildings, causing high costs to society.
This is why CDE’s case study within the RECARE project focuses on soil erosion in the Frienisberg area. Solutions for sustainable soil management can only be identified, developed, and implemented successfully if the diverse needs of all stakeholders are taken into account. For this reason, the project actively involves farming families, insurance companies, municipal authorities, water scientists, agricultural extension workers, farm contractors, and research institutions.