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Prof. Dr. Christine Alewell

Department of Environmental Sciences
Profiles & Affiliations

Soil as an essential resource

In a world of climate and land use change, soils are one of the most essential resources to sustain humankind and biodiversity. However, soil is a finite and - considering the current land use and management - endangered resource. We investigate soil health as well as soil threats, mainly soil degradation by erosion and wetland degradation. We use stable and radiogenic isotopes as well as modelling, remote sensing and observations to assess status and functions of soils.

Selected Publications

Alewell, Christine, Ringeval, Bruno, Ballabio, Cristiano, Robinson, David A., Panagos, Panos, & Borelli, Pasquale. (2020). Global phosphorus shortage will be aggravated by soil erosion. Nature Communications, 11(1), 4546. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18326-7

URLs
URLs

Alewell, Christine, Borrelli, Pasquale, Meusburger, Katrin, & Panagos, Panos. (2019). Using the USLE: Chances, challenges and limitations of soil erosion modelling. International Soil and Water Conservation Research, 7(3), 203–225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iswcr.2019.05.004

URLs
URLs

Panagos, Panos, Borrelli, Pasquale, Poesen, Jean, Ballabio, Cristiano, Lugato, Emanuele, Meusburger, Katrin, Montanarella, Luca, & Alewell, Christine. (2015). The new assessment of soil loss by water erosion in Europe. Environmental Science & Policy, 54, 438–447. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2015.08.012

URLs
URLs

Selected Projects & Collaborations

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Accelerating collection and use of soil health information using AI technology to support the Soil Deal for Europe and EU Soil Observatory

Research Project  | 4 Project Members

The objective of AI4SoilHealth is to co-design, create and maintain an open access European-wide digital infrastructure, compiled using state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods combined with new and deep soil health understanding and measures. The AI-based data infrastructure functions as a Digital Twin to the real-World biophysical system, forming a Soil Digital Twin. This can be used for assessing and continuously monitoring Soil Health metrics by land use and/or management parcel, supporting the Commission's objective of transitioning towards healthy soils by 2030. The project is divided into seven (7) work-packages including: (WP2) Policy and stakeholder engagement - networking and synchronizing with EU and national programs, (WP3) Soil health methodology and standards - developing/testing methodology to be used by WPs 4-6, (WP4) Soil health in-situ monitoring tools and data - developing field and laboratory solutions for Observations & Measurements, (WP5) Harmonised EU-wide soil monitoring services - developing the final suite of tools, data and services, (WP6) Multi-actor engagement pilots - organizing field-works and collect users' feedback, (WP7) Soil literacy, capacity building and communication - organizing public campaigns and producing educational materials. Key deliverables include: 1) Coherent Soil Health Index methodology, 2) Rapid Soil Health Assessment Toolbox, 3) AI4SoilHealth Data Cube for Europe, 4) Soil-Health-Soil-Degradation-Monitor, and 5) AI4SoilHealth API and Mobile phone App. Produced tools will be exposed to target-users (including farmer associations in >10 countries), so their feedback is used to improve design/functionality. Produced high-resolution pan-European datasets will be distributed under an Open Data license, allowing easy access by development communities. AI4SoilHealth will provide an effective Soil Health Index certification system to support landowners and policy makers under the new Green Deal for Europe. Keywords: Biogeochemistry, biogeochemical cycles, environmental chemistry, Earth observations from space/remote sensing, Environment, resources and sustainability, Environmental monitoring systems, Terrestrial ecology, land cover change.

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THE SOIL BIODIVERSITY AND FUNCTIONALITY OF MEDITERRANEAN OLIVE GROVES: A HOLISTIC ANALYSIS OF THE INFLUENCE OF LAND MANAGEMENT ON OLIVE OIL QUALITY AND SAFETY

Research Project  | 3 Project Members

After more than fifty years of intensive agriculture application, the environmental situation for many olive groves across the Mediterranean Region is quite dramatic in terms of land degradation, biodiversity impoverishment, functionality loss, which may have already impacted on the quality and safety of olive oil, one of the most important commodities produced in Europe. Through the implementation of a series of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary WPs, this project will perform the first rigorous diagnostic of the environmental situation of olive groves soils at a broad scale, considering the most important areas of olive production at the Mediterranean Region and its relationships to olive oil quality. Soil O-live aims (i) to analyze the impact of pollution and land degradation on soils from olive groves in terms of multi-biodiversity, ecological function at different levels of organization and scales; (ii) to investigate the relationship of soil health status with quality and safety of olive oil; (iii) to implement effective soil amendments and ecological restoration practices that promote manifest soil biodiversity and functionality enhancements in permanent Mediterranean olive orchards across its native range of distribution, that should be translated to improvements in olive oil quality and safety; (iv) to define rigorous ecological thresholds that allow to implement future clear norms and regulations in order to design a novel certification for healthy soils in European olive orchards.

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AVATAR - A reVised dATing framework for quantifying geomorphological processes during the AnthRopocene

Research Project  | 4 Project Members

Artificial fallout radionuclides are found ubiquitously in the environment around the world and they provide the privileged marker candidates ("golden spikes") of the Anthropocene stratigraphic layers. The onset of their emissions coincided with the period of Great Acceleration that took place after World War II and that is characterised by an increase in soil degradation, which was often triggered by land use change. Particle-bound radiocesium and plutonium are widely used to date modern sediment archives and reconstruct soil redistribution rates during this period. However, although the fallout chronology is better constrained in the Northern Hemisphere, much less is known regarding the timing and the spatial distribution of their deposition in the Southern Hemisphere. The AVATAR project consortium will therefore fill this important knowledge gap through the compilation of all data available in the literature and in recently released declassified military archives. Then, it will conduct soil and sediment sampling in zones identified as data gaps based on the comprehensive literature survey. These soil and sediment samples (~2000 in total) will be analysed for cesium and plutonium to calculate their fallout radionuclide inventories and sources (i.e. the proportion of global fallout due to USSR and USA atmospheric nuclear bomb tests with a peak in 1963 vs. the proportion of fallout due to French nuclear tests conducted between 1966 and 1974 in the South Pacific) and to improve sediment core dating. Spatial analyses will be conducted to provide the first reference map of radiocesium and plutonium fallout in the southern hemisphere. Then, this improved fallout distribution knowledge will be used to reconstruct soil redistribution during the Anthropocene through an innovative combination of conversion and erosion models in two pilot large river basins of the southern hemisphere. Importantly, the AVATAR project will propose original methods to validate the spatial and the temporal distribution of sediment transfer reconstructions in these large river basins during the Anthropocene. Finally, the compiled databases and maps will be shared with a wide community including atmosphere scientists, climatologists, radio-toxicologists and soil scientists. A participative network to update and upgrade a fallout radionuclide database at the global scale will also be launched at the end of the project.