What is the current level of knowledge of soil and land management in Europe?
What further knowledge is required?
Dear stakeholder,
welcome to the LANDMARK platform based on the activities carried out by the Work Package 1 team working on STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT between May 2015 and February 2018. The platform aims to integrate the knowledge harvested from local, national and European stakeholders concerned with soil functioning and land management. About 470 stakeholders from five European countries participated in 32 structured workshops run in 2017 covering multiple land uses and six climatic zones.
Report on optimised suites of soil functions, as prioritised by stakeholder groups divided into:
- PART A (page 1-60) – this SUMMARY describes the methodology undertaken to harvest the stakeholders’ knowledge and synthesizes the workshop results in descriptive tables and graphics;
- PART B (page 61-394) consists of the two guides used to run the workshops and a collection of the individual reports of the 32 workshops carried out, each with a detailed description of outcomes, agenda, participants and workshop’s evaluation;
- 32 workshop reports list available at Work Package 1 STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT page.
THE INFORMATION COLLECTED
The results from the workshop reports have been harmonized in a database able to filter information about:
- which are the stakeholders’ priorities and concerns in terms of soil and land management?
- which are their perceptions on soil quality and soil functions?
- which tools and management techniques the stakeholders implement,?
- what is the stakeholder knowledge on indicators and monitoring systems?
- which activities the do stakeholders perform?
- which is the knowledge of soil and land-related policies?
- what are the gaps and ideas in terms of soil quality, soil functioning and land management?
THE MODELS
Multi-criteria decision analysis was used for data analysis. Two qualitative models were developed using Decision EXpert methodology to evaluate “existing empirical knowledge” and “future soil knowledge needs”.
The methodology is described in the paper by Bampa et al. (2019) on HARVESTING EUROPEAN KNOWLEDGE ON SOIL FUNCTIONS AND LAND MANAGEMENT USING MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION ANALYSIS while the two DEXi models and the database with the input data and the results are accessible below.
You can insert your own inputs ( or from the database below), run and investigate the two models:
THE RESULTS
The two maps below represent the general modelled results of the multi-criteria decision analysis done: on the left, the stakeholders’ NEEDS in terms of future knowledge requirements on soil and land management and on the right the stakeholders’ existing empirical KNOWLEDGE.
The maps highlight the six climatic zones with the location of the workshops. The circle are representing the farmer and farm advisor workshops, while the squares are representing the multi-stakeholder workshops. The degree of knowledge and needs range between essential (high), good, moderate and poor ( low)and it can be investigated in detail in the database below divided by country and by workshop.
| Stakeholders’ future SOIL knowledge NEEDS | Stakeholders’ existing empirical SOIL KNOWLEDGE |
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