RECARE research on Soil and Ecosystem Services to be presented at the 5th International EcoSummit
Teodoro Marañón from Institute of Natural Resources and Agrobiology of Seville will be presenting some RECARE findings at the 5th International EcoSummit - Ecological Sustainability: Engineering Change in Montpelier, France from 29th August to 1st September 2016. Teodoro, who is responsible for the RECARE case study looking at soil contamination in Guadiamar, Spain, will be presenting some results from the case study, including information about the RECARE Ecosystem Services (ESS) framework and the RECARE review paper on soils and ecosystem services.
The session on Soil-plant interactions and soil ecosystem services delivery will focus on soil-plant interactions for the delivery of soil ecosystem services (ESS) such as: nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, water retention, soil erosion, and soil fertility. The session will focus on marginal lands (nutrient poor, abandoned and polluted) since these remain unexploited for the moment. The hypothesis is that growing biomass on such land (as compared to leaving this land bare) increases ESS delivery. Given the huge total surface area of such land worldwide, this might actually result in large significant increases in ESS delivery. Moreover, given the increasing world population, marginal lands are the most suitable areas for biomass agriculture, thus leaving agricultural land available for food production. The core objective of this session will be to answer three questions: (1) how can the relationships linking soil functional biodiversity and ESS be defined; (2) how can the indirect value of soil ESS delivery be assessed, and (3) what are the policy implications of increasing the delivery of soil ESS
