Ignored Soil Biodiversity in Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services MONITORING-Reproting-Mapping Programmes in Europe

07.01.2016
Author:Eyüp Yüksel
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Ignored Soil Biodiversity in Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services MONITORING-Reproting-Mapping Programmes in Europe: the invisible component of moving attractive bird, large mammals, reptilian, and plant species (the so-called “biodiversity indicators species”), in fact the most prominent ecosystem services providers along with water for the wildlife species living on the earth Eyüp Yüksel, Biologist, B.S. METU, M.S. Ankara University Does attraction peculiar to humans on the soil alone determine everthing in our universe? IMPORTANCE of SOIL BIODIVERSITY! Data gathering so far aimed to determine the fate of biodiversity in European Union (EU), European Environment Agency (EEA) countries, Economic Commission for Europe (ECE, Pan-European?) countries, and Turkey, an important country which has, though one sided benefit sharer for mainly working for EU’s benefits, in the framework of a prominent commercial and biodiversity cooperation with EU, soil biodiversity indicators for developing a set of protected areas soil conservation indicators in relation to continuation of ecosystem services in protected areas (NATURA 2000 & EMERALD Networks, Towards Being Linked to National Parks, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and SEPAs in Turkey) in European Union have ignored soil biodiversity. As far as I see, only OECD had emphasised these “fact and figures”, and worked concretely on developing soil biodiversity indicators, in particular in Montreal OECD Experts Working group in Canada in the early 2000s. In spite of the “facts and figures” stressed by IRENA report issued by EEA, edited by Dr. Jan Erik Petersen, the EU Commission and relevant agencies so far has ignored the importance and vitality, and the indespensable roles of such invisible organisms which are not to be seen by the naked-eye of a lying men. This freely associates me expert point of views’ failures as the leading experts see politicians like a lying man, an ordinary citizen, as the leading distinguished experts an scientist are in a way hopeless in reporting the nature conservation and environmental problems, and feel themselves alone in the eyese of public. This is resulted in monotony of reporting styles and contents in Europe, Wolrld Bank, UNEP, World Trade Organisation, UNDP, UNECE, IPBES, and etc. In doing so the most experienced expertise of EU and its related expertise institutions could have not seen, the indispensable necessity of following-up the actual losts and benefits from the viewpoint of wildlife, rural people, urban people, and ecosystems’s biotic and abiotic “essential elements, like polyunsaturated fatty acids, the amino acid methionine etc. ” to be up-loaded by outside factors. The leading famous expertise organisations having adequate budgets, financial sources and eminent staff capital, like EUROSITE, ENCA, ECNC OECD, EPASA (Turkey), EFNCP, Scottish Heritage, other distinguished research agriculture, environment, nature conservation, ecology research institutes working with OECD Secretariat from Canada, Australia, Switzerland, UK, Japan, and etc. I called them, the “working in the field agencies” should be taken by the EEA, UNEP and other similar organisations in controlling their reports’ checking whether they fit to the real ongoing situation or not. I konow, at the moment my proposal is hopless, but I do believe it will complete such incomlte butyet published reports’ validity and influence over the society. I mean, EEA must act a a scinec-policy afecd agency but think of sociologically, anthropologically, even psychologically in order to convince people to achive and learn nature conservation in large ecosystems of Natura 2000 sites, EMERALD Network, CDDAs, and UNESCO MAP Bioreserves, as European people sound the most civilized man, but yet have the most primitive feelings&drives given by their genes and cultural heritage which are still strictly below their ego, and superego! This is not a judgement, but only an exhausting observation! Like us, we urban citizens, wildlife species likewise rural village and farming people need ecosystem services provided by the ecosystem where they are living in it. Ignored Soil Biodiversity conservation and monitoring, in the famous cornerstone reports of the environmental conservation agenda of our affluent societies; causes failure of ecological working of nematodes, microorganisms, fungi etc., so perhaps fails in serving urban people, wildlife indicator species living over them. Soil Organic Carbon Content MONITORING in Natural Habitats&Ecosystems, including Protected Areas, N2Ks, the EMERALD net, and CDDAs, the Valuable and Beautiful Landscapes of Terrestrial Ecosystems of Europe and Turkey still representing Pieter BRUEGEL’s natural and farming, and Van Goch’s farming landscapes in our contemporary Century, the 21^st Century, should be considered the pioneering invisible component of biodiversity composed by birds, mammalinas, amphibians, herpetofauna, and broad leaved trees, steppe woody flora in an Europe Biogeographic region, bees, Eisntein most wonder about them!, from Otis tarda to Liquidambar orientalis in Köyceğiz, Dalyan, Marmaris, in Turkey, in a couple of SEPAs (Special Environment Protection Areas, (Özel Çevre Koruma Kurumu, in Turkish) having a more valuable variety compred to those of Madacasgar, located in another continent!) Madagaskar! Yes, EU works on agri-biodiversity issues very strongly! However, the importance of agri-environmental situations in the maintenance of large mammals, and bird species conservation so far has been neglected by EU organisations. Meanwhile the insects not below, but under and inside the soil cover is also ignored in data handling, determination of biodiversity indicators and so on. Crop production needs soil. Without soil how can a wildlife member bird be fed? This bird maybe a member of IUCN Red List and Natura 2000 member that belongs to Bird Directive Annex also... Do we provide ecosystem services provided by, let us say, NATURA 2000 and EMERALD Networks plus EEA CDDAs, the protected areas derived from biodiversity adequately in reporting, assessing? Who provide nutrients to the highly affluent EU society’s consumption on the market shelves, birds, or soil worms? Monitoring “current situation”, enough for conservation? Quite a passive attitude towards humanity, wildlife, human health ideologically? Why do we not select the root-sıuupporters for species, habitat and ecosystem supporters which actually are soil organic carbon content and biodivesitry at this microcosmos level, and social economic supporters in Natura 2000, EMERALD, and CDDA areas? Do we reaaly escape from responsibility by determining and focusing on only species, habitat lists selected amongst the klarge animals and plants? Is this a habit not questioned adequately so far? Is this the easiest way to us? Easiest ways cannot always guarantee the best conservation policy option in conservation history in spite of whether you perepared the legislation superb!

The EU Commismion has focused on the protection of these species mainly by means of preparing protection action plans dedicated to them: How Species conservation can be supported through Rural Development Programmes

Individual Species fact sheets mainly dealt with by the EU:

According to Guidance document on the strict protection of animal species of Community interest under the Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC: Species conservation within a wider political and legal context I.1.1 Political context (1) Preserving, protecting and improving the environment, including biodiversity, are essential objectives of general interest pursued by the European Community, as provided for in Article 174 of the Treaty. (2) In 2001, the EU Heads of State and Government made a commitment at the Spring Summit in Göteborg to 'halt the decline of biodiversity by 2010'2 . The same Göteborg Council adopted the EU Sustainable Development Strategy, which again stressed the need ‘to protect and restore habitats and natural systems and halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010’. The Sixth Environmental Action Programme (6th EAP)3 , which constitutes the EU’s “environmental work plan” from 2002 to 2012 was adopted in 2002. The issue of nature and biodiversity conservation is one of the four priorities in the 6th EAP, with the focus on ‘protecting, conserving, restoring and developing the functioning of natural ecosystems, natural habitats, wild flora and fauna with the aim of halting … the loss of biodiversity, including diversity of genetic resources, both in the European Union and at the global scale’ with a particular view to ‘halting biodiversity decline with the aim to reach this objective by 2010’. (3) These EU efforts go hand in hand with the EC Biodiversity Conservation Strategy adopted in 1998, which was developed to meet the EC’s obligations as a Party to the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992). Under this Strategy, four Biodiversity Action Plans were adopted in 2001 in various policy areas (natural resources, fisheries, agriculture, economic and development cooperation). With the latest Communication of May 2006 on halting the loss of Biodiversity by 20104 , the Commission launches a new effort to pull together EU actors to meet the 2010 target and foster recovery of biodiversity. (4) Within all these initiatives, the issue of species protection is at the forefront of debate and has an indicator role in judging the health of ecosystems. Our ability to ensure that species survive over the long term as part of our European natural heritage will show the extent to which our conservation and biodiversity policies are truly effective. The ‘target date’ of 2010 is very likely to accelerate progress. Accordingly, the full and proper implementation of both the Birds5 Directive and the Habitats Directive, which seeks to ‘… maintain or restore, at favourable conservation status, natural habitats and species of wild fauna and flora of Community interest’, is of major importance and a test case as to how far our commitments can be achieved in practice. We omit maintenance, reporting, assessing monitoring nematode, fungi and soil microorganisms, so have no right speaking of ESSs provided by biodiversity in large ecosystems of European terrestrial component in EU. Article 17 of the Habitats Directive: conservation status of habitats and species of Community interest (2001-2006) These pages give access to assessments of conservation status of habitats and species as well as other information reported by the Member States. The European Commission adopted the Composite report on Article 17 on July 13th 2009. You can find the composite report here. For more information on the composite report visit the relevant European Commission website. Please note this page is for the reporting period 2001-2006, if you are looking for the 2007-2012 reporting period, The reporting format was developed by the ETC/BD and DG Environment together with the Member States. Technical support was provided by the EEA. The assessments rely on data collected by hundreds, if not thousands of individuals, many of them volunteers. This report would not have been possible without their work. What is soil? There is no single definition that all soil scientists agree on. The soil is a rich world and the habitat of living matter, a chemical reactor that is constantly changing the surface of the earth to create a medium that nearly all production of food, fibre, water retaining space, and even medical drugs depends on. How could you protect Habitat and Bird Directives’s biodiversity content decided and approved so far, i.e. species lists with no restoration? Restorations more important than Listing conserved, endangered, enthretaned species. As being a nature conservationist working on protected areas for years, in my opinion, mapping; restored, or in good/bad status of habitats or in other words, or protection of habitats are more important than strict listing mapping and reporting of species and habitas as Habitat suitability modelling has shown itself to be an important decision support tool for those concerned with the problem of where to target habitat and landscape restoration efforts. However, present approaches generally focus upon the biophysical characteristics of habitats and sites, and tend to ignore the social values associated with landscapes and habitat features. As a result current approaches only partially resolve the problems we face when dealing with a multifunctional landscape. In this paper, we examine how these limitations of current approaches may be overcome. In UK, it is suggested that by using the approach to model the spatial aspects of the natural capital associated with a given landscape, we may provide the user community with a framework that more fully addresses management issues that arise in the context of a sustainable, multifunctional landscape. In the case of the South Downs we show that restoration strategies that seek to take account of the multiple functions of downland differ from those which focus exclusively on enhancing or restoring the biodiversity of these areas. The underground soil species are not so much attractive and vsible without dredging, digging, and the tool microscope, as the birds, polar bear, panda, although it regulates and re-distributes water and nutrients, and is the foundation for the livelihood of man on earth. How great is the cause for concern? Is the increased frequency of natural disasters in some ways linked to what is happening in the soil? At the global scale, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognises the role of the soil and its vegetation cover as a non-climate driver of climate change and as a sink where carbon dioxide can be accumulated from the atmosphere. As being EU scale biodiversity data collectors, assessment, reporting and mapping digital IT experts, should still we waiting for a new Hubble Telescope specifically to be designed to see them? Why present biodiversity reporting institutions dependent mainly on IT, GIS, mapping experts and web sites, portals, the ongoing mapping meetings?! Do they influence society and policy makers more compared to yesterday? According to an EEA Technical Report, “Biodiversity embraces the variety of genes, species and ecosystems that constitute life on Earth. It plays a key role in the functioning of ecosystems and the provision of ecosystem services which are essential for human life and well-being. These include provisioning services (e.g. fisheries, biomass), regulating and maintenance services (e.g. pollination, nutrient cycling, and water purification) and cultural services (e.g. recreation). The European Environment Agency’s recent assessments, including the recently published The European environment – state and outlook 2015 and State of Nature in the EU, show that Europe’s biodiversity is still being eroded, despite significant local improvements. Genes are fed by soil nutrients! (i.e. Soil biodiversity forms bird biodiversity as the genes of birds are synthesized via various enzymes, coenzymes, and building blocks of protein molecules, towards protein synthesis; replicated by soil nutrients!) Genes are composed of pentose sugars, nucleotides, P, C, atoms etc. So do biodiversity at the visible macro scale! According to Healthcheck for habitats and species in the EU Specific findings: One signifi cant fi nding of the report is that habitats associated with sustainable agricultural practices show a worse conservation status than non-agricultural habitats, with only 7% showing favourable status compared to 21% for other types of habitats. Pressures in these areas, which account for large areas of valuable habitats, include the abandonment of pastures, over or under-grazing, unbalanced fertilisation and use of pesticides, changing cultivation practices, the aff orestation of grasslands and the removal of landscape features such as hedges. Scientists are aware that half of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was once in the soil and that the soil is a key to reducing the concentration of greenhouse gasses. That means that soil reduces the impacts of global increased heating due to free carbondioxide gas pressure increase in the atmosphere, the cause of increased temperature over the globe. Soil is not just at the heart of the concern about climate change, it is also central to our concerns about biodiversity, land degradation (again an ecosystem service required provided by soil, but not birds, woody and tree plants!), desertification and flooding. Therefore we can easily see that human health which maybe prone to increased temperature impact of climate change and the existence and maintenance of biodiversity in the wild areas supresed also by the same physical impact are intersected. Protecting the soil is not like protecting an endangered species. There are practically no truly “natural” soils in Europe. Human actions have shaped European landscapes for thousands of years; producing the beautiful cultural landscapes of Europe of today while forest soils still are tired, exhausted, and poor after the intense use of them during Roman Period. In case protected area soil biodiversity were not carefully monitored, and conserved in case required, rapidly advancing soil degradation is severely threatening soil biodiversity, eventually leading to the extinction of species yet to be discovered and fully studied. Implications for human health of the degradation of the soil ecosystem need still to be fully understood. We cannot protect human-wildlife species Habitat-Bird Directives Annexes-IUCN Red List species-land managemet-production consumption integrity by only monitorinf EC Directive member species and EUNIS sites, lives and lives patterns, contributions, approaches, destruction of local rural people as human beings defines the degree of protection in NATURA 2000 and EMERALD sites, in addition to EEA’s CDDAs named by EEA. 'Multifunctionality schemes' are introduced as a means for visualizing the complex interrelationships in rural development processes and to 'map' the functional relationships and specific reconfigurations in the use of resources such as land, labour, knowledge and nature that underlie them. In the discussion, reference is made to case studies from the IMPACT research programme. The Rhongold case is used to illustrate how MF-schemes can help to define micro-macro relations and facilitate their quantification. Several conceptual issues are addressed in relation to the translation of farm data to the regional level, indirect multiplier effects, substitution effects and the importance of synergy. Methodological complications are seen in problems associated with the acceptance of a paradigm shift; the inadequacy of available regional, national and European data sets; the complex nature of micro-macro relations; the difficulty of defining boundaries and reference systems; and the struggle with time, scale and space as critical modifiers of reality. The need to link the dimensions of agricultural and rural change demands a more multidisciplinary, holistic approach to analysis and conceptualization. Environmental monitoring by selecting indicators, such as pH, electrical conductivity, per area covered by certain plant species, number of or the size of populations of bird species, ratio of cover of forests to complete natural ecosystems at the national scae, or irrigated, non-irrigated, arable, not arable farmlands with respect to country surface of other terrestrial lands covered by by distinct plant species cover, and their corresponding final products, reporting and mapping at country and Europe scale is very important in coıntrolling the ongoing /worsening, remaining the same, or improving) state of the environment and nature together. They help decision makers, and policy makers represented by Governments to plan the best fit and the most economic instruments to clean, restore, or protect nature and environment at a desired level according to budget owned by the country at hand. However, biodiversity and organic carbon (C atom) content of the soil have hitherto neither measured nor monitored in relation to big, easily seen animal and plant species biodiversity spaced over the soil, fed by soil and water extremely dependently in protected area management, conservation and data handling of natural ecosystems at European and Turkey level. Despite the fact that, many conservationists, the EU Commission (DG Environment) and decision makers speak of the benefits of ecosytems services produced by their large ecosystems in NATURA 2000 and EMERALD sites, European Environment Agency’s Commonly Designated Protected Areas to be included in each country’s national protected areas, like National Parks, Natural Sites, Nature Monuments, and Special Environmental Protected Areas (SEPAs established upon the decision of President Mr. Turgut Özal, in ortehr words, “The Mustafa KETEN period” first time Göcek bay SEPA (a famous beautiful European yachting coastal landscape mostly visited the rich of our planet, as it has many convenient ports for coastal yacht tourism paradise area which is so frequently visited by the famous noble singer STING, (noble, because, he devoted himself to the protection of Amazon Forests, the lungs of the world!) in Turkey only!). Since, Natura 2000 is not a system of strict nature reserves from which all human activities would be excluded. While it includes strictly protected nature reserves, most of the land remains privately owned. The approach to conservation and sustainable use of the Natura 2000 areas is much wider, largely centered on people working with nature rather than against it. However, Member States must ensure that the sites are managed in a sustainable manner, both ecologically and economically. Farming local people welfare comes from soil biodiversity and soil organic carbon content. So why don’t we give priority to monitoring them to be our prime, the most favoured indicators? Soil texture is known, soil humidity also is known, but soil biodiversity composed of living creatures so far has not been taken into consideration to protected area data assessment, and conservation tools, including bio-monitoring, i.e. not adequately known! Soil biodiversity is formed by nematodes, and other small creatures up to the smaller sized fungi, bacteria. This ignorance, in my eyes, has caused failures in conservation practice and protected area management tools and policies, which is so far not clearly manifested except by the OECD Secretariat. I always appreciate OECD’s Agri-environmental Biodiversity Indicators Environment Policy Working Expert Groups Section when leaded by Mr. Wilfrid LEGG, and Kevin PARRIS, at Agricultural Directorate General in Paris, France, since I participated one of their meetings first time in Zurich, Switzerland. Unfortunately this OECD Secretariat Section today no longer works in the same way, somehow closed officially. The leading managers above I mentioned have retired as well unfortunately. Anyway. Developed and developing countries, and famous international environment organisations still omit the connection between biodiversity composed by soil microrganisms, and feed above soil spcies of animals, and plants. Conventional conservationists, biodiversity data gatherers, and handlers, taxonomists deal with only large animal and plant species indicator species one may easily see while they are moving for animals having locomotion ability, or fixed at a certain point for the plants. Biodiversity reporters, monitoring experts, mappers mostly coming from taxonomists, botanists, zoologists, even GIS and digital mapping experts with no check availability from the protected area managers over Europe, and Turkey! Plase be fair before answering this question: Do biodiversity monitoring programmes desigened and implemented are complete?! Such monitoring reports, such indicators, and assesments do not make any sense to a EUROSITE, IUCN, ECNC, EFNCP, the Balaton lake wetland conservation science and management leader professor Herodec, or an EPASA member in Europe, and Turkey, in case they launch a protection programme, and decide at the site protected area management policy! Classical indicator project staff and taxonomists see them as part of farming elements that is provision of fertility for food for farming and economic plants that people derive their every kind of energy from them in the form of carbon C-C bonds, only. So they used to monitor farming and environment by for checking only soil compaction, erosion, irrigation, arable area, etc. for instance by European Environment Agency (EEA). In fact, first time in history the first historic antibiotic drug penicillin is derived by the isolation of mold from soil microorganisms, fungi, yes as being one of the most historic ecosystem service used in curing human and animal diseases in hospitals and home!, Penicillium notatum. Today its various derivations developed afterwards (Penicillium chyrosegenoum, and other semi-synthetic antibiotics working on bacterial cell wall, and RNA inhibitors in order to inhibit protein synthesis in cellular machinery of Prokaryotes to save Eukaryotes, i.e. human beings, and big, multicellular animal species) have been taken by the patients incountably. In the UK, intraspecific negative feedback effects, where performance is reduced on soils conditioned by conspecifics, are widely documented in plant communities. However, interspecific feedbacks are less well studied, and their direction, strength, causes, and consequences are poorly understood. If more closely related species share pathogens, or have similar soil resource requirements, plants may perform better on soils conditioned by more distant phylogenetic relatives. There have been few empirical tests of this prediction across plant life stages, and none of which attempt to account for soil chemistry. Here, we test the utility of phylogeny for predicting soil feedback effects on plant survival and performance (germination, seedling survival, growth rate, biomass). We implement a full factorial experiment growing species representing five families on five plant family-specific soil sources. Our experiments exploit soils that have been cultured for over 30 years in plant family-specific beds at Oxford University Botanic Gardens. Plant responses to soil source were idiosyncratic, and species did not perform better on soils cultured by phylogenetically more distant relatives. The magnitude and sign of feedback effects could, however, be explained by differences in the chemical properties of “home” and “away” soils. Furthermore, the direction of soil chemistry-related plant-soil feedbacks was dependent on plant life stage, with the effects of soil chemistry on germination success and accumulation of biomass inversely related. Our results (1) suggest that the phylogenetic distance between plant families cannot predict plant–soil feedbacks across multiple life stages, and (2) highlight the need to consider changes in soil chemistry as an important driver of population responses. The contrasting responses at plant life stages suggest that studies focusing on brief phases in plant demography (e.g., germination success) may not give a full picture of plant–soil feedback effects. The effects of plant phylogeny on plant–soil feedbacks across multiple life stages, whether variance in feedback effects was related to the phylogenetic distance separating families and whether these plant soil feedback effects were correlated with soil chemistry. It is found thet feedback in one explanatory variable, biomass, was significantly related to phylogeny; however this effect was weak and the direction of the feedback effect was opposite to that expected if close phylogenetic relatives were bad neighbors. Soil chemistry was a better predictor of germination and biomass accumulation, but that these relationships showed contrasting patterns. Phylogenetic distance was a weak predictor of plant performance, with plants accumulating more biomass on soils conditioned by families closer to them on the evolutionary tree. Here can one say, merely reporting which species is located on which habitat, over which EU biogeography is enough to report? This is the reverse of pattern expected for shared pathogens or resource competition among close relatives. Although this might not be surprising as our study only looked at interfamily distances, a recent meta-analysis that included a range of phylogenetic and taxonomic scales showed that even for closely related species, plant–soil feedbacks interactions do not in general correspond to the shared pathogen hypothesis (Mehrabi and Tuck 2015). Interestingly, when soil chemistry was accounted for, no significant effects of phylogeny were detected for feedbacks, whether measured in terms of biomass, growth rate, germination success, or seedling mortality. Taken together, our results do not provide support for the hypothesis that plant performance and survival are improved on soils cultured by species further away from them on the evolutionary tree. Mapping with no foot-note coming from evolutionary knowledge enough for Europe’s and Turkey’s fate with regard to scarcity of soil, water, food shortage expected due to climate change? Pğerhanpğs paleonthologic migration paths are not completely used, but inside body of your biodiversity indicator plant, and animal species where physological stages under metabolism regulatory and synthesis pathways still goişng on by means of biochemical pathways, as they are still living, i.e. the indicator species are not an element of yoru maps and reports, but living organims Per se (not for reports and maps prepared for policy makers, decison givers) which are neither dead, nor fixed! I hereby once more stress that, the conceptual isolation approach which used to archive almost everything in Europe and Turkey is wrong! Soil chemistry was correlated with plant–soil feedback effects. Several manipulative experiments provide evidence in support of a role for chemistry in mediating plant–soil feedback directly (McCarthy-Neumann and Kobe 2010a,b). Other studies suggest that C:N ratios and base cations can affect feedbacks indirectly, by influencing decomposition rates, microbial functioning, and plant productivity (Hobbie 1992; Pérez-Harguindeguy et al. 2000; Ehrenfeld et al. 2005). The variable effects of soil chemistry observed for seeds, germinants, young seedlings, and old seedlings/mature plants highlight the importance of including multiple life stages in feedback experiments (e.g., Silva Matos et al. 1999; Bell et al. 2006; McCarthy-Neumann and Kobe 2010a,b). For example, the effects of soil chemistry on germination success and accumulation of biomass were inversely related. If similar stage-specific responses occur in the field, then studies targeting brief phases in plant demography may give a misleading indication of the net direction and magnitude of feedback. The scientists discuss, they were not able to rule out the effects of species diversity of the parent beds as drivers in the responses, and future work might better understand the influence of the species or functional diversity of parent communities on soil chemistry and feedback responses. A further limitation of the experimental system used here is the use of a restricted number of model species that do not directly mirror natural assemblages. However, our results on using phylogenetic distance as a predictor for plant–soil feedbacks generally support recent meta-analysis on biomass responses that include a larger number of species found in natural assemblages, with higher phylogenetic and life-history resolution (e.g., more species, genera, and families; annuals, perennials, trees, forbs, and shrubs) (Mehrabi and Tuck 2015). Although the soils in this experiment were high in nutrients (e.g., on average 17% N) and likely to emphasize pathogen over symbiont effects, we did not isolate the soil biota to confirm this. Negative soil feedbacks resulting from changes in soil biota are not just created by pathogens (Bever et al. 1997; van der Putten 2009), and the specificity of interactions of plants with symbionts may not be linearly correlated with feedback responses (Bever 2003). Thus, “black box” experiments such as the one reported here, although demonstrating how patterns of feedback may or may not correspond to mechanisms such as shared pathogens, should be supplemented by further experiments to confirm exactly which organisms are responsible for generating the observed plant responses (Bever et al. 2010; van der Putten et al. 2013). Experimental manipulation that orthogonally treats soil chemistry and soil microbes would be a useful future direction in this respect. We have learned from the above facts, the below deductions and inductions. Biodiversity and protected area management legistation and , -as far as I know- international nature conservation and biodiversity related convention preparation works usually do not include the link between properties of soil, risks of soil quality reduction in biodiversity rich habitats, and natural animal and plant kingdom biodiversity to be conserved primarily by the traditional legislation and conventions so far. In general, soil is rather examined, conserved, and reported for farming areas. Water and soil (nutrient) demand by natural species in the wild somehow has been forgetten. This must be one of the elements of human behaviour pattern, a subject matter of social science, but influences our nature data management and protected area management. At any one location the properties of the soil and land are constantly changing. This creates not only a challenge in soil monitoring and data collection. The problem is also in how data is interpreted into relevant information for policy. Land use and management policies need to account for the changes that are taking place in the soil and its landscape and may take guidance from the golden rules of natural resource management that have been formulated (Holling and Meffe, 1996). Notice that, owning only large mammals, and tree species biodiversity indicators knowledge via issued versatile but a slightly distant from the reality reporst each year is not enough for conservation and managing various sectors from energy to transportation for EU, and Turkey as well! Soil problems, and properties only is remembered, for example, probably when one needs a soil and wildlife species distribution map overlapping in an eccentiric new way for reporting and mapping for the interest of the public. It has been obvious that, the magnitude of drive in designing indicators programme to be assumed needed by the public image effect by far exceeds the actual conservation requirements and requirements demanded by nature, at ecosystem level, even in natural protected large ecosyetems of Natura 2000 SACs and SPAs, and UNESCO world heritage sites! Yes, the world of nature conservation sector is overlapped with the anthropogenic considerations, urban lives, urban daily ideological thinking and behavioral ways of people as human beings living in or around protected areas who are forming the ideology of urban areas living style have a considerable frequency and intensity of contact with nature, not equal or above to those of rural farmers but still could be considered as considerable in particular, in this urban sprawl period in Europe we faced, and in Marmara and Thrace (İstanbul, Adapazarı, Bursa, İzmit, Tekirdağ, the Metropolitan Area of İstanbul) regions of Turkey. The nature conservation efforts begin in natural habitats but not ended there, instead continues in urban areas where they are multiplicate. Above discussion indeed stresses the fact that the influence which supresses the actual needs of species, living large animals, multicellular plants up to the most tiny living microorganisms that many conservation programmes, and policies has not perceived and included them to their priorities and programmes respectively. Classical European and Turkish way of protected area data collection, a comprehensive of flora and fauna in the viewpoint of taxonomy, mapping, listing, reporting approach to be used in maintaining resilient ecosystems maybe aloof, in particular during this rural natural and urban artificial ecosystems interface in which the source of various impacts overlapped through each day worsening climate change impacts period observed in Europe, Turkey, a European country represented in CoE, and EEA, Mediterranean, East Europe, West Europe, Central Europe. Besides this, relevance of present biodiversity and environmental indicators, for instance, let’s see, water quality indicators should be re-assessed by means of matching their relevance and impacts on each. This can present us a more sophisticated, while provide more useful tools in protected area ecosystem management, particularly in judging more critical problematic situations when we muast decide immdediately to make a decision and response promptly! Such situations are not an exception, as I say as being an experienced protected area manager directly since 1993 in Turkey, and in a way, indirectly Latvia! Remember that ecosystsem management begins not from the high level decision makers and policy makers, but in site area managers! Soil property (soil organic carbon content conservation) and biodiversity conservation should be thought at the first glance, through new biodiversity conservation practice in the field. Education also can be reavaluated and programmed according to this. As we have just tried to clarify the fact that biodiversity conservation mainly dealy with, visible, large, easily seen by the naked-eye species takes the lion’s share at the expense of ignoring soil, and water entity which supports biodiversity over the soil level by means of sunlight catalyse due to interest of people has shaped by press in that way. They rather prefer to see by the naked-eye, instead of microscope, or telescope, or in any another differential method, like x-ray crystallography. Besides this behavioural pattern humans would like to do is seing by the eye, and perceive any fact or object directly, closely, and fast enough. Compared to scientists an ordinary citizen would be considered as being an impatient child. So why do we prepare biodiversity indicators only for their approval in accordance with their professionally limited capacity?! Why should we still convince them!? The large portions of the society has no influence in taking political decisions. Moreover, as the expenses would be too high to follow-up implementing the outputs (benefits or failures) of our conservation legislation and policies; monitoring biochemistry of large animals, mainly, let’s say, the SEBI indicators animals and plant species thus also are ignored by continuing the same way. In other words, ignoring from the beginning of synthesis of their nucleotides, pentose sugars, amino acids, enzymes, the building block monomers of macromolecules, their possible susceptibility by climate change induced undesired heating not bearable by them, so perhaps distortion of fatty acid and polysaccharides syntheses, ketone bodies, like acetoacetate, dimethyl ketone, carboxyl, water, carbondioxide, pyruvate synteheses as well, and so on, till to the complete organism with its ongoing healthy physiology which serve ecosystem services to the people and environment. As majority of the professionals in the conservation sector in Europe and Turkey used to isolate biodiversity data collection, assessment, and reporting just before mapping concept “for the policy makers”, located whether in a protected or not protected area, protected areas network, such as EMERALD, and Natura 2000 without considering molecular aspects of endemism, raraenes, distribution, abundance from the internal status, therefore the metabolic casuses induced by climate change extra heating effect, the root casues which cause degradation of ecosystem services. By keeping to do so, i.e. ignoring monitoring the initial critical steps of organisms which form our EC Directives Annexes, and IUCN lists species biodiversity, EU and Turkey will miss opportunities in ceasing the problems created by climate change greenhouse effect timely! We must response timely, because, in fact, we cannot see some facts and figures caused by climate change appropriately. For instance, in Spain there are certain species losses (e.g. a brown bear reported by ECNC’s a distinguished illustrated nature conservation magazine earlier when I have no internet availability in Turkey) recorded in Red Natura 2000 sites. I mean, still there are so many unknowns occurring in the metabolism and response of animal, lichens, blue-green algea, fungi, soil microorganisms, planctons, plant, bryophyte species when they exposed to climate change increased temperature and diminished humidity in the soil not normal for the site they used to stay! You cannot measure this fact via monitoring birds only! The inevitable changes measured in the temperature of the soil for the whole continent, Europe, is a big challenge for species to be coped with their climate change pressure. Their responses are limited, maybe limited only to migration towards the North! (the same is true for the southern hemisphere lands!). This must be not so easy in the reality. After consuming completely migration towards North and South Poles such temperate climate species will be able to found Moon, or Neptune?! We must measure the temperature of both soil, water and the mammalian species we have selected them the best fit indicator! Otherwise no one can aware of any incremental slow or instantaneous rapid change in this animal’s or plant’s metabolism/physiology due to worsening impacts of climate change. So we must not generalise the impacts of climate change on the maps, reports, and our talkings in an extended interval conceptually; yet taxonomy, and digital mapping should be our indispensable instruments, the prerequisites through our continent-wide EU environmental biodiversity monitoring! Notice that, I mean sudden, acute changes rather than long term, chronic alterations, because early warning signals almost always more important, moreover concretely useful for user to taking early and cheaper measures! During 2010 - the International Year of Biodiversity - the multitude of animals and plants that live in Europe have enjoyed greater public and political interest; this has been reflected in a notable increase in related publications, initiatives and political actions. Colourful images of endangered birds and butterflies call for our attention, but what of the ‘bugs’ and bacteria that inhabit our soil; do earthworms, springtails, soil mites and microbes enjoy the same level of attention? Molecular toxicologic processes interfering with basic biochemical pathways determine the health status of bees (e.g. Apis mellifera), one of the most valuable and vulnerable species on the earth, in Albert EINSTEIN’s words. For this reason, keeping in mind this fact that, no one can propose keeping the same traditional way of monitoring and indicator selection as monitoring efforts, investments, and allocated budget for the expenses must help developing robust and healthy ecosystems which should not be restricted to merely brain-storming ideas during expert meetings from various professional and scientific fields, resulted in the preparation of academic and political publications, booklets, and brochure due to social pressure exerted by the hihgh level politicians, the decision-makres above us with respect to social power rank, so such indicators do not sustain, restore, or support our (both humans, and wildlife species) real lives! It would be better we nature conservationists and nature biodiversity data collectors, assessment and reporting experts, project managers, department and group heads, and task managers, in addition to GIS-NetCAD-Remote Sensing digital mapping experts would seek for further support from the society to overcome this challange! As one may aware of the fact that recent scientific articles on climate change impact focused on biophysical measurements (not taxonomy, and Latin zoological, botanical names!) on the so-called abiotic component of ecosystem, the soil, such as temperetaure, and dried texture of soil matrix, that is nature, but not on the various species as differentation and variance of each species will cause difficulties in measuring the internal (in a way, In vivo) impacts of climate change for each organism. Their diminutive nature and underground existence keeps them out of sight and out of mind; their other-worldly appearance, their crawling, squirming, gnawing, conspire to render them unattractive; but what they lack in size and beauty, they make up for in numbers and worth.

The mites, lice and bacteria that inhabit the world beneath our feet are vital for maintaining balanced ecosystems and agricultural production - quite simply, we could not live without them. From the standpoint of functional biodiversity as well as from the purely quantitative perspective, soil organisms exceed many more popular groups of organisms. What does “soil biodiversity” mean? What do these organisms look like? Why are they so important? How do they interact with agriculture, and what can agriculture do to maintain and improve soil biodiversity and soil fertility? Soil facts In Rothamsted Experimental station researchers tried to measure the surface of the particles in a single ounce of clay rich soil. They came up with a total of six acres!! (Eisenberg, 1998). Aristotle called earthworms the intestines of the earth (Eisenberg, 1998). Darwin’s last book was not on natural selection but on worms and earth, the regeneration of life out of soil on the journey from dust to dust (Warshall, 1999). Soils contain the largest number of biological, biochemical and biophysical phenomena of any slice of the planet (Wilson, 1984). At dinner: All the plants on your plate were nourished by soil. The meat came from animals that ate plants that grew in soil. If your table is made of wood, it came from trees that grew in soil. Without soil there would be no food, no table to put it on (Silver, 1993). When I add up the live weights, exclusive of roots, estimated by soil biologists, I find more living biomass below ground than above it, amounting to the equivalent of 12 horses per acre (Hans Jenny in Stuart, 1984). If all the elephants in Africa were shot, we would barely notice it, but if the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil were eliminated most of us would not survive for long because the soil could not longer support us (Hans Jenny in Stuart, 1984). A single spade full of rich, garden soil contains more species of organisms than can be found above ground in the entire Amazon rain forest (Soil Biology website). Besides above discussion, soils and human health Concern about threats to our health is often a top human preoccupation so that any aspect of air and water that is related to human health gains immediate political attention. Knowledge about health related effects of soil degradation is limited. So how one can sustain biodiversity produced ecosystem services to be allocated for human beings’ health living in big cities Soil tilth, compaction, and available water capacity reflect the ability of a soil to regulate and partition the flow of water. Texture, such as loam or clay, is an important soil property in the support of buildings and roads. An enhancement of soil health or quality could be measured by an increase in organic matter content in cultivated soils over the years, which would reflect the soil's ability to cycle nutrients (source: NRCS). In Europe, the picture is at first sight less well documented than in the USA because each European Country has its own equivalent of the US EPA, with its own traditions and legal responsibilities. European knowledge about the environment is therefore often less well integrated. The European Environment Agency (EEA) is establishing a European database of indicators. The United States has for long had the tradition of seeing soil and water conservation as a single issue. In Europe, water is seen as the main issue, addressed in the Water Framework Directive. On the one hand, this was a very positive step, but with respect to the processes and cause and effect, it would perhaps have been better to have a more conceptual basis including soils, than a directive just addressing hydrology. The soil and its functions were half left out. There have been yet not a regular soil carbon content monitoring at national level in Turkey, although some projects include measurement of soil organic matter by volumetric analysis of organic carbon. Turkey’s priority is conservation of soil organic carbon, instead of monitoring it. However, keeping in mind that Turkey has appropriate technological capacity and experience required in this area, in some pilot regions such as in Specially Protected Areas (SPAs) in which agriculture has made contribution to biodiversity conservation, soil organic carbon indicators can be determined and monitored both by monitoring the local CO2 emissions, and measuring soil organic carbon via chemical analyses.

Current situation: In Turkey organic matter of soil is analysed in the framework of efficiency calculations and evaluations. In fact, organic matter content of the soil is analysed by calculating its organic carbon (C). At present physical, chemical, and biological properties of soils in Turkey currently are being updated in the framework of efficiency by the Prime project level. Almost for each province, efficiency inventories which include parameters such as nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), pH, and lime have been carried out since 1960s. The soils are generally alkaline (basic) in Turkey, except in the Rize province of Black Sea region which is acidic (pH= 5). Carbon loss: The rate of organic matter change (both loss and gain) in Turkey is rather slow, as it has been roughly estimated that both carbon loss, and improvement of the soil by adding organic matter from the outside takes years. Availability of organic fertilisers which can be used by the farmers has been drastically reduced due to considerably regressed livestock number and animal husbandry. With the result that, the soils could not have been sufficiently supplemented by organic material. Table 1. Percentage of organic matter (OM) regional distribution of soils in Turkey according to Walkley-Black Source Soil and Fertiliser Research Institute Directory, Turkey Fertiliser and Fertilisation Guide (1988). Regions Number of soil < 1 1-2 2-3 3-4 > 4 The Less Medium Good High Least correspondingly Thrace and Marmara 8402 14.9 49.9 27.2 6.2 1.8 Black Sea Region 10142 13.6 35.8 29.7 13.9 7.3 Central 25419 21.4 53.9 20.2 2.6 1 South East 4035 29.2 60.6 6.7 2.4 1.1 East Anatolia 1319 13.2 49.9 25.5 8.5 2.9 Aegean Region 7525 17.5 46.8 25.6 6.2 3.9 Lakes Region 3632 19.0 56.3 17.5 4.5 2.0 Mediterranean Region 3139 23.9 47.1 20.1 6.3 2.6 Turkey’s Avarage 19.2 49.8 22.4 5.6 3.0 Impacts of residual removal and forestry legislation in 1980 on soil: Burning of crops after harvesting, and soil erosion have been amongst the factors that have diminished the carbon (C) content of soil for decades, particularly combined with forest management at the expense of gradual loss of forest ecosystems and biodiversity since the early 1980s. Irrigation projects: In addition, some irrigation projects (channels) have altered level of underground water. Water extraction and increasing demands of farmers to constructing dams to the government in to providing extra water for their own small-scale traditional farming system. Göksu Delta Specially Protected Area (SPA): Göksu Delta SPA, a Ramsar wetland especially for waterfowls, managed by the Authority for the Protection Special Areas (APSA) contains sand dune habitats, lagoons, important nesting places of Caretta caretta, Chelonia mydas species along the coastal zone is located in the Mediterranean region of Turkey. The soil organic carbon content of the delta is rather low indicated by research projects carried out on behalf of EPASA. The ratio of seminatural habitats, the grasslands is also low. Table 2: Results of soil analysis of a strawberry orchard in Göksu Delta SEPA, 2002: Source: former The Authority for the Protection of Special Areas (APSA), Turkey (later on re-called as EPASA). Depth Measurement 0-30 Situation Texture Good Salinity EC mmohs/cm 0.22 Without salt pH - 8.06 Alkaline Lime % 43.68 much lime Organic material % 1.42 Low Available phosphorus (P) ppm 36.3 High Available potassium (K) ppm 155.3 Mean Greenhouse emissions of Turkey have been monitored between 1990-1997. Prime Ministry. Regarding greenhouse emissions inventory at national level which covers calculation of emissions energy, gas leakages, industrial processes, agricultural lands, waste landfills, and forest lands. Recorded data, and statistical calculation methods according to Intergovernmental Climate Change Panel (IPPC) Guide have been used in calculating emissions. The direct greenhouse gases CO2, CH4, N2O, and the indirect greenhouses gases NOx, NMVOC, CO, and SO2 are the variables. The importance and benefits of carbon trapping and retain in protected areas along Mediterranean coasts in Turkey: Regarding annual budget of national monitoring programmes in the framework of EU accession, in Turkey, below would be carried out by the Government via The Environmental Protection Agency for Special Areas (EPASA, Özel Çevre Koruma Kurumu Başkanlığı, ÖÇKKB) in cooperation with Köy Hizmetleri Genel Müdürlüğü could made such a cooperation, but the two organisations at present is no longer working (for instance, the distinguished Turkish organisation EPASA, since the midst of July, 2011 does not exist.) Since low productivity and widespread residue removal (e.g. burning, in Turkish in the country, and the soil in the protected areas have relatively been conserved via biodiversity and vegetation cover conservation programmes, as lower soil erosion and CO2 emissions expected in the SEPAs; Turkey would establish a baseline via taking the average of these two extreme values to making a rough estimation at the initial stage; Both the Mediterranean and terrestrial climates should be taken into consideration while calculating the extent of carbon stock changes in the SEPAs along the coast of Mediterranean sea, and in the rest of SEPAs in which terrestrial climate dominates respectively; As making the overall estimation of soil carbon stock changes is rather difficult at the initial stage, high value areas not only for agricultural lands tillage and productivity, but also for biodiversity and habitat conservation such as the present SPAs managed by EPASA, and Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), and SPAs proposed according to EC Directives, the Mediterranean vegetation cover and climate represented in protected areas would be taken into consideration; The above proposed periodic assessment values would be compared with those of other OECD countries located in the Mediterranean region, such as Greece, Italy and France with particular emphasis on heterogeneity and homogeneity regarding representations of each climate and vegetation cover, and soil classes for each country; To overcome budgetary restrictions: having being considered the general trend is a general decrease in grasslands total surface area at national level, sufficient data is currently available to comparing with other lands so as to making statistical comparisons between different land uses, which would be multiplied by the number of corresponding units of similar areas of the given kind distributed throughout various related parts of the territory. The farmers somehow have preferred implementation of their own traditional methods as trying various trials almost arbitrarily in the agricultural lands, instead of preferring the support of expertise and technology readily provided by the government (KHGM and MARA). However the farmers in the Mediterranean region have relatively benefited from agricultural technology and introduced by the government. Fortunately there is no need for highly sophisticated instruments to measure the carbon content of the soil. Technical capacity of KHGM with its various research institutions has been adequately improved. Since at the present time, for Turkey, monitoring of the organic carbon component of the soil is not a priority, since its conservation takes the lion’s share as erosion prevention works prevail in the last years. Perhaps in the next years when European Union (EU)-Turkey co-operation is established in the field of nature conservation and agriculture, monitoring of organic soil carbon at the national level may be feasible for the country. Therefore, for the moment, as a provisional alternative way, soil organic carbon would be monitored in the Specially Protected Areas (SPAs), which may possibly be incorporated into the already onset small-scale agriculture/soil projects of the Authority for the Protection of Special Areas (APSA), the governmental agency responsible for managing 13 SPAs in Turkey. In fact, this agency recently has been focused on the analysis and protection of agricultural lands together with nature conservation in the same soils, particularly in its largest SEPA Tuz lake (Lake Salt), which is also amongst the priorities of the government. Lake Tuz SPA represents well the climate (terrestrial) and soil characteristics of the Central Anatolia in which peculiar steppe habitats a prominent concern of the EU region are found, where some habitats are tentatively selected technically by me, on behalf of our Ministry of Environment and Urbanism, to be apporoved as the first NATURA 2000 sites of Turkey, after ECRAN project for Balkans and Turkey, completed. Along with Turkey’s environmental management, and nature conservation history, the fascinating protected area agency, EPASA (between 1989 to 2011) can and presently does co-operate technically with the General Directorate of Rural Affairs (KHGM) for Lake Tuz, and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) for SPAs in which agriculture is one of the major concerns for the indigenous peoples, at project implementation level as well. One of the challenging tasks here is conversion of project level approach so far into a single national monitoring system. Since they represent restricted but important part of the territory; as a first attempt, the CO2 emissions (greenhouse gas) in the SPAs of Turkey would be monitored as the function of land use changes as it may be economically more feasible for the whole territory. Moreover as a governmental agency EPASA (Özel Çevre Koruma Kurumu Başkanlığı) hitherto had some functions as a monitoring institution which have been hidden in its small projects with regard to conservation of its own areas. In other words, so far it has focused on land use, and conservation of fragile ecosystems found around human settlements and agricultural lands within the boundaries of SEPAs (Özel Çevre Koruma Bölgeleri) via Planning Decisions taken by EPASA (Özel Çevre Koruma Kurumu Başkalığı), its powerful instrument since 1989. As soil biodiversity conservation and carbon (C) retaining in the soil interrelated each other mutually, for APSA it would be better to integrate monitoring of soil organic carbon indicators and biodiversity and nature conservation projects, from now on particularly in the framework of conservation of European Agricultural Landscape. Last but not the least, like Belgium, Turkey can indirectly measure carbon sequestration by measuring and/or predicting land use, or land cover change. Though this programme may still not fulfil the requirements of statistics, let’s say not to applying random sampling, measurement of soil organic carbon at SEPA and National Parks level would be a practical, cheaper and eventually a provisional solution for Turkey, particularly when incorporated into the values of measurements taken from Black Sea, Eastern Anatolia, and Marmara regions of the country representing diverse climatic conditions, and biogeography patterns. CONCLUDING REMARKS I want to provoke EU nature environmental and biodiversity data handlers in order to warn them their indicators are still large enough not to be coped with soil-water entity loss problem, therefore, ecosytem services provided by biodiversity is lost in spite of EC Directives influenced indicators Monitoring loss! While motivating Turkish scientists to follow-up EU environmental and nature conservation methods mainly focused on farming issues, and voluntarily and quite energetically follow and learn from ETC/BD located in France National Nature History Muesum (MNHN) centre Paris, i.e. ETC/BD's and EEA's biodiversity data handling issues!.. The EU's orderness style of living an managing is correct in any case, for any non-EU country, even Turkey won't be able to be a member of EU! In fact, remember that, irrespective of Turkey’s EU membership, Turkey is a CoE and EEA member country. References: APSA) (2002). “Soil Analyses in the Agricultural Fields of Göksu Delta Specially Protected Area 96”. Türkiye Ankara. Conversations with KHGM, Conversations with Refik Saydam Hygene Institute www.rshm.sb.gov.tr Web page of KHGM www.gdra.gov.tr Web page of Refik Saydam Web page of State Meteorological Directorate General www.meteor.gov.tr

FAO ORGANIC AGRICULTURE AND SOIL BIODIVERSITY, Nadia El-Hage Scialabba

http://www.fao.org/organicag/doc/soil_biodiversity.htm Soil Biodiversity and Agriculture (abridged version) http://www.ecpa.eu/files/gavin/soil_bio_and_ag_SHORT_issuu.pdf Spatial variability of physical soil properties in conditions of ecological farming in protected area,

Fazekašová

Dana Kotorová

Balázs

Beáta Baranová Lenka Bobulska Ekologia 01/2011; 30(1):1-11. DOI: 10.4149/ekol_2011_01_1 Source: Soil Conservation and Protection in Europe The way ahead This book has been collectively written by the SCAPE steering committee and project officers (in alphabetical order): Prof. Anton Imeson Lead author chapter 1 and 6 Significant contribution to chapter 3 & 5 Overall editing and reviewing Dr. Arnold Arnoldussen Shared lead author chapter 3 Prof. Diego de la Rosa Shared lead author chapter 3 Dr. Luca Montanaralla Lead author chapter 2 Dr. Luuk Dorren Shared lead author chapter 4 Michiel Curfs Shared lead author chapter 4 Significant contribution to chapter 6 Overall editing, reviewing and layout Prof. Olafur Arnalds Lead author chapter 5 Sanneke van Asselen Significant contribution to chapter 6 Overall editing, reviewing and layout http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/esdb_archive/eusoils_docs/other/SCAPEbook.pdf And EU Commission, Healthcheck for habitats and species in the EU http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/knowledge/rep_habitats/docs/conservation_en.pdf

Source: Plant-soil feedbacks from 30-year family-specific soil cultures: phylogeny, soil chemistry and plant life stage

Authors

Zia Mehrabi,

Thomas Bell,
Owen T. Lewis
First published: 22 May 2015Full publication history
DOI: 1002/ece3.1487View/save citation

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.1487/abstract

EU Commission Natura 2000

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/natura2000/index_en.htm

- Knickel and Renting, 2000
- Knickel, H. Renting
- Methodological and conceptual issues in the study of multifunctionality and rural developmen’
- Rural., 40 (4) (2000), pp. 512–528
- View Record in Scopus

Citing articles (121) Sociologia Ruralis Volume 40, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 512-528 Methodological and conceptual issues in the study of multifunctionality and rural development (Article) Knickel, K.^a, Renting, H.^b ^aInst. for Rural Development Studies, Goethe University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany ^bRural Sociology Group, Department of Social Sciences, Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands http://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-0033676837&origin=inward&txGid=0 EC guidance on species protection Guidance on Articles 12 & 16 of the Habitats Directive http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/conservation/species/guidance/index_en.htm Guidance document on the strict protection of animal species of Community interest under the Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/conservation/species/guidance/pdf/guidance_en.pdf Landscape and Urban Planning Volume 75, Issues 3–4, 15 March 2006, Pages 244–264 Landscapes and sustainabilit Modelling natural capital: The case of landscape restoration on the South Downs, England