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Developing a robust soil health indicator framework for Europe

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Developing a robust soil health indicator framework for Europe
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14
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CC Attribution 3.0 Germany:
You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
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Soils play a crucial role in supporting various ecosystem services, from food production to climate regulation and waste recycling. Global soils face varying degrees of anthropogenic management and degradation, making the protection of soil health vital for maintaining soil functions critical for supporting all life on Earth. Soil indicators can help effectively communicate information from monitoring programs to policymakers, describing the state and changes in soil systems as well as helping to develop, guide, and provide feedback for a range of stakeholders. Given the vast number of indicators used to assess soils, a selection framework is required to select the most appropriate. The proposed framework for soil health indicator selection synthesizes information from current environmental frameworks to help provide a set of criteria for indicator selection, allowing candidate soil indicators to be assessed. Selected indicators can be communicated through templates which explain the environmental function and policy questions they address. This procedure can be demonstrated using the twelve descriptors presented in the EU soil monitoring law. Thus, the criteria form the basis of a robust indicator selection framework to communicate scientific findings to policymakers regarding soil health.