Photo: LFZ / Buchgraber
Soil quality
Soils serve as production sites, raw materials, filters, and habitats. Their development takes thousands of years. Soil protection means thus protecting the bases of our life.Which other tasks do agricultural and forest soils fulfil?
Agricultural soil is a raw material and the production site of our food, e.g. of cereals, potatoes, fruits or vegetables. The forest soil is the production site of timber and forest fruits.Soils offer space for settlements, enterprises and traffic routes.
Being a biotope, the soil is a habitat for numerous organisms. Like an immense biocatalyst it transforms organic matter like leaves or plant residues and acts like a giant filter and reservoir of water.
The sustainable protection of this valuable resource calls for comprehensive efforts.
Which are the most serious dangers to soils?
· Soil compaction and soil sealing as well as the loss of soil caused by erosion.
· Annual consumption amounts to approx. 10 m² per person.
· Growing rates of pollutants such as heavy metals are affecting soils particularly in mountain areas. The Alps serve as Europe’s “undercut slope” where the emission load from industrial European areas rains out and is “combed out”. As a result of this filtering effect of forests, Alpine soils are subject to disproportionately high stress.
In a European comparison, the level of information on Austrian soils is excellent. The monitoring system BORIS (soil information system in Austria) of the Austrian Federal Environment Agency collects comprehensive data material, such as the soil inventory and the forest inventory. The Federal Office and Research Centre for Forests conducts comprehensive surveys of Austrian forest soils. The Austrian Soil Mapping has mapped Austria’s entire agriculturally utilised soils.
Since 2002 soil conservation has also had a European dimension in terms of an EU-wide co-ordinated soil monitoring, the development of soil indicators and measures of quantitative soil protection.
Soil protection measures rely on these fundamental data:
Modern filters installed in industrial and power generation plants are keeping our air clean.
The purification and disposal of industrial and commercial sewage is subject to tight environmental standards; the same applies to waste oils from petrol stations and car shops, and to the landfilling of wastes.
The Austrian Agri-environmental Programme (ÖPUL) for agricultural production in line with the requirements of environmental protection includes quite some measures for the preservation of healthy soils.
· Crop rotation
· Fallow land
· Renunciation of fertilisers
· Limitations in numbers of cattle per hectare
· Promotion of organic farming
· Protection against erosion
Due to the increasing number of protected areas, such as water protection areas, national parks, Natura 2000 or RAMSAR areas, more and more land is protected against uncontrolled development and no longer open to intensive agricultural utilisation.
25.08.2008, Lebensministerium Öffentlichkeitsarbeit