Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2021
Authors
Martin Hvarregaard Thorsøe Anna Jacobs Chiara Piccini Dario Fornara Eloïse Mason Frédéric Vanwindekens Frederik Bøe Grzegorz Siebielec Julia Fohrafellner Julia Miloczki Katharina Meurer Martina Kasper Lilian O'Sullivan Michal Sviček Maria Gonçalves Miro Jacob Nádia Castanheira Nils Borchard Olivier Heller Peter Laszlo Raimonds Kasparinskis Sara Mavsar Sevinc Madenoglu Vit Penizek Wieke Vervuurt Žydrė KadžiulienėAbstract
Deliverable 2.7. This report provides a synthesis of stakeholders’ perceptions of knowledge on and use of knowledge on sustainable soil management, as well as the knowledge needs. The report is based on interviews with 791 stakeholders in 23 European countries completed in the summer of 2020 in the context of the EJP SOIL project. The analysis highlights a number of shortcomings in the current use and coordination of knowledge on sustainable soil management. For instance, insufficient communication and coordination between policymakers, researchers and farmers is reported. Most national reports stress that, currently, the promotion of knowledge on sustainable soil management towards stakeholders is ineffective. Challenges, for instance, arise because the theoretical knowledge produced at universities is considered irrelevant or inaccessible to farmers who have a practical approach to soil management. It is also reported that there is too little continuity in soil research due to project dependence, which is a challenge because soil research requires long-term investigations. Furthermore, current research insufficiently supports integrated decision-making of practitioners and policymakers, where different challenges and trade-offs continuously must be balanced. In some countries, this is partly due to insufficient funding for dissemination activities, whereas in other countries funding is not utilized correctly. Additionally, reports broadly agree that there is too little continuity in research due to project dependence, which is challenging because soil research requires long-term investigations. In relation to specific areas, knowledge gaps regarding the loss of soil organic matter, carbon sequestration and exploring the effects of climate change, mitigation and preventive measures. were identified. A range of other areas also appear as highly important in certain regions − for instance, ensuring an optimal soil structure, enhancing soil biodiversity, water storage capacity, soil nutrient retention and use efficiency. To overcome these challenges, stakeholders stress that it is important to improve the coordination between policy, research, industry, advisory services and farmers because knowledge about field activities and sustainable soil management is fragmented and poorly coordinated. Thus, stakeholders stress that it is important to strengthen intermediaries, such as the advisory service and farmers’ associations, as they are important knowledge brokers, both in terms of improving knowledge availability and to provide feedback on knowledge gaps to research institutions. Additionally, the need for strengthening networks and peer-to-peer communication is emphasized because these are useful platforms for knowledge exchange. Furthermore, it is important to provide incentives for farmers and improve the visibility of soil challenges for stakeholders, for instance using decision support tools to highlight the benefit of adopting sustainable soil management.
Authors
Qiuzhen Chen Karlheinz Knickel Mehreteab Tesfai John Sumelius Alice Turinawe Rosemary Emegu Isoto Galyna MedynaAbstract
An important goal across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and globally, is to foster a healthy nutrition. A strengthening of the diversity, sustainability, resilience and connectivity of food systems is increasingly seen as a key leverage point. Governance arrangements play a central role in connecting sustainable, resilient farming with healthy nutrition. In this article, we elaborate a framework for assessing, monitoring and improving the governance of food systems. Our focus is on food chains in six peri-urban and urban regions in SSA. A literature review on food chain governance and a mapping of current agri-food chains in the six regions provide the basis for the elaboration of an indicator-based assessment framework. The framework is adapted to the specific conditions of SSA and related goals. The assessment framework is then used to identify the challenges and opportunities in food chain governance in the six regions. The first testing of the framework indicates that the approach can help to identify disconnects, conflicting goals and tensions in food systems, and to formulate strategies for empowering agri-food chain actors in transitioning toward more efficient, equitable and sustainable agri-food systems. The article is concluded with a brief reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of the framework and suggests further testing and refinement.
Authors
Matthias Vanmaercke Panos Panagos Tom Vanwalleghem Antonio Hayas Saskia Foerster Pasquale Borrelli Mauro Rossi Dino Torri Javier Casali Lorenzo Borselli Olga Vigiak Michael Maerker Nigussie Haregeweyn Sofie De Geeter Wojciech Zglobicki Charles Bielders Artemi Cerdà Christian Conoscenti Tomas de Figueiredo Bob Evans Valentin Golosov Ion Ionita Christos Karydas Adam Kertesz Josef Krasa Caroline Le Bouteiller Maria Radoane Ratko Ristic Svetla Rousseva Milos Stankoviansky Jannes Stolte Christian Stolz Rebecca Bartley Scott Wilkinson Ben Jarihani Jean PoesenAbstract
Soil erosion is generally recognized as the dominant process of land degradation. The formation and expansion of gullies is often a highly significant process of soil erosion. However, our ability to assess and simulate gully erosion and its impacts remains very limited. This is especially so at regional to continental scales. As a result, gullying is often overlooked in policies and land and catchment management strategies. Nevertheless, significant progress has been made over the past decades. Based on a review of >590 scientific articles and policy documents, we provide a state-of-the-art on our ability to monitor, model and manage gully erosion at regional to continental scales. In this review we discuss the relevance and need of assessing gully erosion at regional to continental scales (Section 1); current methods to monitor gully erosion as well as pitfalls and opportunities to apply them at larger scales (section 2); field-based gully erosion research conducted in Europe and European Russia (section 3); model approaches to simulate gully erosion and its contribution to catchment sediment yields at large scales (section 4); data products that can be used for such simulations (section 5); and currently existing policy tools and needs to address the problem of gully erosion (section 6). Section 7 formulates a series of recommendations for further research and policy development, based on this review. While several of these sections have a strong focus on Europe, most of our findings and recommendations are of global significance.
Authors
Yuying Jing Martin Krauss Simon Zschieschang Anja Miltner Andrii Butkovskyi Trine Eggen Matthias Kästner Karolina M. NowakAbstract
Surface water runoff can export pesticides from agricultural fields into adjacent aquatic ecosystems, where they may pose adverse effects to organisms. Constructed wetlands (CWs) are widely used to treat agricultural runoff contaminated by pesticides, but the removal of hydrophilic pesticides is usually low. In this study, we suggest superabsorbent polymer (SAP), a cross-linked hydrophilic polymer, as a supplement to substrates of CWs and tested the hypothesis that SAP results in an enhanced removal of hydrophilic pesticides. Therefore, batch experiments were conducted to study the retention capacity of water-saturated SAP (w-SAP) for several hydrophilic pesticides. Retention of the pesticides on w-SAP was related to the ionization state and water solubility of the pesticides. The retention of neutral pesticides, imidacloprid, metalaxyl and propiconazole, was about 20% higher than that measured for anionic pesticides, bentazone, glyphosate and MCPA. The retention of the pesticides by w-SAP mainly resulted from their distribution in the gel-water phase of w-SAP, while less water soluble pesticides might have also been adsorbed on the molecular backbone of SAP. Furthermore, we tested the efficacy of w-SAP for treatment of runoff water contaminated by pesticides in lab-scale horizontal subsurface flow CWs. SAP in CWs improved the removal of the pesticides, including the recalcitrant ones. The removal enhancement was owing to the increase of hydraulic retention time and improvement of biodegradation. The removal of the pesticides in SAP containing CWs was > 93% for MCPA, glyphosate, and propiconazole, 62 – 99% for imidacloprid, 50 – 84% for metalaxyl, and 38 – 73% for bentazone. In the control gravel CWs, the removal was > 98% for glyphosate, generally > 83% for MCPA and propiconazole, 46 – 98% for imidacloprid, 32 – 97% for metalaxyl, and 9 – 96% for bentazone.
Abstract
In agricultural catchments, hydrological processes are highly linked to particle and nutrient loss and can lead to a degradation of the ecological status of the water. Global warming and land use changes influence the hydrological regime. This effect is especially strong in cold regions. In this study, we used long-term hydrological monitoring data (22–26 years) from small agricultural catchments in Norway. We applied a Mann–Kendall trend and wavelet coherence analysis to detect annual and seasonal changes and to evaluate the coupling between runoff, climate, and water sources. The trend analysis showed a significant increase in the annual and seasonal mean air temperature. In all sites, hydrological changes were more difficult to detect. Discharge increased in autumn and winter, but this trend did not hold for all catchments. We found a strong coherence between discharge and precipitation, between discharge and snow water equivalent and discharge and soil water storage capacity. We detected different hydrological regimes of rain and snow-dominated catchments. The catchments responded differently to changes due to their location and inherent characteristics. Our results highlight the importance of studying local annual and seasonal changes in hydrological regimes to understand the effect of climate and the importance for site-specific management plans.
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A large proportion of the soils in Norway require artificial drainage to improve the conditions for crop growth and field operations, but also to reduce the risk of soil compaction, surface runoff and erosion. The need for artificial drainage depends on climate, topography, soil type, groundwater conditions, and also the crop. At present, about 60-70 % of the agricultural land in Norway is artificially drained. Future climate change is expected to lead to higher temperatures, more precipitation and more frequent extreme events in Norway. This poses a challenge with respect to the drainage systems as more intensive drainage than present today may be required in some areas, although it is unclear whether this will be an efficient solution. In this study we aimed to evaluate the possible future changes in subsurface runoff and water balance elements at the Kvithamar experimental site. We set up the and calibrated the DrainMod model for the experimental data from poorly and optimally drained experimental fields. The calibrated model was further used to evaluate changes in subsurface runoff and the water cycle as a whole under changing conditions. We tested the effect of different drainage system designs (drain depth and spacing) on water regime under present and future climate conditions. It was quite difficult to calibrate the DrainMod model for surface runoff and drain flow measured from the Kvithamar lysimeter plots and to find a parameter set that could give a reasonable partitioning of the water. We concluded that due to the complexity of the hydrological regime of a drained field the effect of drains can be masked by other factors, like land use and spatio-temporal variability of soil properties. Our simulation results indicate that drainage system design has a big effect on surface and subsurface runoff as well as on evapotranspiration. Concerning future changes in the hydrological regime, the results varied depending on the future climate scenarios selected.
Authors
Andrii Butkovskyi Yuying Jing Hege Bergheim Diana Lazar Ksenia Gulyaeva Sven R. Odenmarck Hans Ragnar Norli Karolina M. Nowak Anja Miltner Matthias Kästner Trine EggenAbstract
Pesticides in agricultural surface water runoff cause a major threat to freshwater systems. Installation of filter systems or constructed wetlands in areas of preferential run-off is a possible measure for pesticides abatement. To develop such systems, combinations of filter materials suitable for retention of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic organic pesticides were tested for pesticide removal in planted microcosms. The retention of six pesticides frequently detected in surface waters (bentazone, MCPA, metalaxyl, propiconazole, pencycuron, and imidacloprid) was evaluated in unplanted and planted pot experiments with novel bed material mixtures consisting of pumice, vermiculite, water super-absorbent polymer (SAP) for retention of ionic and water soluble pesticides, and synthetic hydrophobic wool for adsorption of hydrophobic pesticides. The novel materials were compared to soil with high organic matter content. The highest retention of the pesticides was observed in the soil, with a considerable translocation of pesticides into the plants, and low leaching potential, in particular for the hydrophobic compounds. However, due to the high retention of pesticides in soil, environmental risks related to their long term mobilization cannot be excluded. Mixtures of pumice and vermiculite with SAP resulted in high retention of i) water and ii) both hydrophilic and hydrophobic pesticides but with much lower leaching potential compared to the mineral systems without SAP. Mixtures of such materials may provide near natural treatment options in riparian strips and also for treatment of rainwater runoff without the need for water containment systems.