Monitoring schema for regional and European application, testing of discrimination of indicators

This deliverable relates to Task 5.3 – Design of a monitoring schema and Task 5.4: Testing and evaluation of monitoring schema. These two tasks aimed to develop a monitoring schema to assess the capacity of European Soils to deliver the five soil functions; 1) primary productivity, 2) water purification and regulation, 3) climate regulation and carbon sequestration, 4) habitat for biodiversity and 5) nutrient cycling. The monitoring schema was designed to facilitate an European wide assessment of the five soil functions, with details on the requirements needed at a regional scale (Member state). The soil, management and environmental attributes selected for measurement and assessment in the monitoring schema were based upon the five soil function models developed in WP3 to support the development of the Navigator decision support system in Pillar 1. The collection and measurement of these attributes were tested at 94 sites across Europe to assess the feasibility, sensitivity and costs of such indicators. The outcome of this work in addition to the D5.2 is six scientific research papers describing parts of the process and presenting the monitoring schema and its applicability across the climatic regions of Europe for two landuse types; arable systems (defined as cereal rotations) and grassland systems (defined as sites with grassland in-situ for five years or longer).