Demand scenarios: quantification of the demand for soil functions, using the prioritisation / weighting by contrasting stakeholder groups

There have been many individual research initiatives that either address the management & assessment of individual soil functions, or address multiple soil functions, but only at local scales. LANDMARK will build on these existing R&D initiatives: the consortium partners bring together a wide range of significant national and EU datasets, with the ambition of developing an interdisciplinary scientific framework for sustainable soil management. (Schulte et al. 2015; Coyle et al.,2016; Valujeva et al., 2016). Deliverable 4.1 attempts to quantify and map the current demand for soil functions (SF) across the European Union, using large scale proxy indicators. For each SF, we outline the key governance challenges, followed by a description of the main drivers for demand (market and policy drivers). Datasets from EUROSTAT, EEA and JRC have been explored to select applied demand indicators. Important considerations for the selection of the indicators are data availability, robustness and spatial coverage. The source data and mapping procedures are described. Finally, the authors make a few preliminary observations on the results.