Vol. 10 (2021)

Robin Stadtmann
Hildesheim: Universitätsverlag Hildesheim, 2021. - 315 p.
Zugl. Hildesheim, Univ., Diss., 2021

DOI 10.18442/179

ISBN 978-3-96424-044-6

Soils are the basis of life for humans and other organisms. Despite this fact, this non-renewable resource is being destroyed worldwide, whereby humans degrade this basis of life more and more. The concept of Ecosystem Services is intended to help contain the worldwide destruction of ecosystems by recording and evaluating the services provided by nature and their loss, and thus making them visible to decision-makers. The environmental medium soil, in which different spheres of the ecosystem overlap and various interactions and processes take place, offers essential contributions to Ecosystem Services. In many studies, however, these various contributions are only insufficiently considered, so that the manifold services of soils remain hidden.
In this study, the contributions of soils to Ecosystem Services are shown exemplarily for the Asinara National Park (Sardinia). For this purpose, a transferable evaluation scheme for provisioning, regulating and cultural Soil-Ecosystem Services is designed, based on field-survey data and physicochemical laboratory analytics. An economic evaluation of the services is not intended. Using soil-geographic models and a digital soil mapping approach, a soil information system is developed, on the basis of which the evaluation scheme is implemented. In the factorial approach, the clearly relief-dependent soil distribution is mapped by a high-resolution digital relief analysis. Results of vegetation ecology are included in order to implement a digital land cover classification using remote sensing techniques. In addition, an analysis of historical land use is carried out in order to map the anthropogenic soil changes recorded in the area and to visualize cultural Soil-Ecosystem Services. The spatio-temporal changes in the use of Soil-Ecosystem Services on the Mediterranean National Park Island is examined. With the acquired soil information a high-resolution contribution to the management of the protected area is provided, which can be used for the planning of management and ecological restoration measures as well as for the execution of habitat analyses.
In order to promote the transfer of Soil-Ecosystem Services in planning and decision-making processes and to ensure a non-anthropocentric perspective, a piggyback approach is proposed in which a soil function assessment forms the basis for the designation of Soil-Ecosystem Services. Using a broad interdisciplinary approach, the case study documents the complete process of a highresolution evaluation of all categories of Soil-Ecosystem Services based on primary data collection for the Mediterranean landscape on a regional scale. The results illustrate the significant potential of digital mapping approaches, but also underline the need for a minimum of field survey, especially for the assessment of the cultural services of soils.