Sustainability Research Institute, School of Earth and Environment, Faculty of Environment, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, Leeds, UK.
Soil Physics and Land Management Group, Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands.
J Environ Manage. 2020 Mar 1;257:110005. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.110005. Epub 2019 Dec 27.
Soil improvement measures need to be ecologically credible, socially acceptable and economically affordable if they are to enter widespread use. However, in real world decision contexts not all measures can sufficiently meet these criteria. As such, developing, selecting and using appropriate tools to support more systematic appraisal of soil improvement measures in different decision-making contexts represents an important challenge. Tools differ in their aims, ranging from those focused on appraising issues of cost-effectiveness, wider ecosystem services impacts and adoption barriers/opportunities, to those seeking to foster participatory engagement and social learning. Despite the growing complexity of the decision-support tool landscape, comprehensive guidance for selecting tools that are best suited to appraise soil improvement measures, as well as those well-adapted to enable participatory deployment, has generally been lacking. We address this gap using the experience and survey data from an EU-funded project (RECARE: Preventing and REmediating degradation of soils in Europe through land CARE). RECARE applied different socio-cultural, biophysical and monetary appraisal tools to assess the costs, benefits and adoption of soil improvement measures across Europe. We focused on these appraisal tools and evaluated their performance against three broad attributes that gauge their differences and suitability for widespread deployment to aid stakeholder decision making in soil management. Data were collected using an online questionnaire administered to RECARE researchers. Although some tools worked better than others across case studies, the information collated was used to provide guiding strategies for choosing appropriate tools, considering resources and data availability, characterisation of uncertainty, and the purpose for which a specific soil improvement measure is being developed or promoted. This paper provides insights to others working in practical soil improvement contexts as to why getting the tools right matters. It demonstrates how use of the right tools can add value to decision-making in ameliorating soil threats, supporting the sustainable management of the services that our soil ecosystems provide.
如果土壤改良措施要广泛应用，就必须在生态上可信、在社会上可接受、在经济上负担得起。然而，在现实世界的决策背景下，并非所有措施都能充分满足这些标准。因此，开发、选择和使用适当的工具来支持在不同决策背景下更系统地评估土壤改良措施，是一项重要的挑战。这些工具的目标各不相同，有的侧重于评估成本效益、更广泛的生态系统服务影响和采用障碍/机会，有的则旨在促进参与式参与和社会学习。尽管决策支持工具的复杂性不断增加，但为评估土壤改良措施选择最合适的工具，以及为促进参与式部署而选择适应性强的工具，提供全面的指导一般都很缺乏。我们利用欧盟资助的项目（RECARE：通过土地关怀防止和修复欧洲土壤退化）的经验和调查数据来解决这一差距。RECARE 应用了不同的社会文化、生物物理和货币评估工具，评估了欧洲各地土壤改良措施的成本、效益和采用情况。我们专注于这些评估工具，并根据三个广泛的属性来评估它们的性能，这些属性衡量了它们的差异和广泛部署以帮助利益相关者进行土壤管理决策的适用性。数据是通过向 RECARE 研究人员发放在线问卷收集的。虽然一些工具在案例研究中比其他工具表现得更好，但收集到的信息被用来提供指导策略，以选择合适的工具，考虑资源和数据可用性、不确定性的特征，以及特定土壤改良措施的开发或推广的目的。本文为在实际土壤改良背景下工作的其他人提供了一些见解，说明为什么正确选择工具很重要。它展示了如何正确使用工具可以为缓解土壤威胁的决策提供更多价值，支持我们的土壤生态系统提供的服务的可持续管理。
