THE COUNTER

Soil is under many land degradation threats (sealing, compaction, erosion, floods and landslides, droughts, hydrogeological instability, fires, storms, salinisation, contamination, acidification and desertification) which decrease the availability of fertile soils. This loss of fertility is due to processes which decrease the soil potential in delivering ecosystem services on various levels.

In order to quantify this land degradation over the soil resources UN established the SDG15.3 indicator. In LANDSUPPORT, we have assessed this indicator for the entire EU territory. The employed procedure for performing such assessment followed the UN guidelines about SDG Indicator 15.3.1. The procedure required the calculation of the following 3 sub-indicators : (i) Vegetation productivity, (ii) Land cover change, and (iii) Soil organic carbon. All details of this calculation are available on the LANDSUPPORT website.

From this LANDSUPPORT calculation, we have a rate of 6,018,000 ha of land degradation per year which corresponds to 1.908 sqm per second.

This number should be enough to make us understand the emergency in which we find ourselves.

That’s why we need your help!

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