Displays

The Spanish Society of Soil Science (www.secs.com.es, SECS) was founded in 1947 by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) with the main objective of promoting the study and knowledge of Soil Science. To achieve the slogan of  2015 International Year of Soils, Healthy soils for a healthy life, taking into account our long experience working with the concept of soil as a living system, we planned several projects and activities to promote the knowledge of this living and non-renewable natural resource among the different sectors of the society. Educational programs and cooperation agreements with different Educational Centers and the Administration as well as collaboration with Universities, Ecology and Nature Associations, National and International Parks, Museums and others Institutions related with the conservation of terrestrial ecosystems, were established in order to get them involved in the Educational Projects (organization, participation, financing). One critical point in the success of the projects was the elaboration of diverse, innovative educational materials to stimulate, in an attractive way, the knowledge of this non-renewable natural resource among different sectors of society as well as the level of implication of persons involved on the projects.

In this contribution we will show some examples of these materials and initiatives concerning different aspects of Soil Science which result to be of interest to the general public: the comic Living in the Soil in different languages (Galician, Spanish, English, Italian and Catalan) and its corresponding Lesson Plans; Vivere nel Suolo: Giornata di Legalitá Ambientale;Vivire nel Suolo: Gionarta Mondiale del Suolo; Would life on the planet be possible without the soil?; Nature in the family; The game of soil; The elaboration of an Artificial Reproduction of a Soil Pedion and its inclusion in different centers related to soil; the creation of a Permanent Soil Room in the Museum of Natural History of Santiago de Compostela University (MHN); temporal exhibition Soil:Art Painting with soils; Pictures of José Caballo; group visits to the MHN and hence to the Permanent Soil Room; Soil Courses and Conferences; participation in Competitions. Our experience indicates that the inclusion of these innovative and attractive materials is very useful in the planning of activities related to soil to give visibility to this non-renewable resource hidden under the vegetation, the soil. We consider that these successful initiatives can be used as a prototype to transmit the message of importance on this natural resource, the soil, and the need of its protection all over the world.

Acknowlegments. All persons and organizations that participate in all these SECS activities and projects.

How to cite: Díaz-Raviña, M., Barral-Silva, M. T., Arias-Estévez, M., and Mataix-Solera, J.: How to give visibility to soil: attractive and innovative educational initiatives of Spanish Society of SoilScience (SECS), EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-22011, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-22011, 2020.

Focusing on the number of the word “soil” in the field of science in the national guideline of Japan, it has been decreasing almost every ten years. Also, soil is taught inorganically and organic aspect is not treated in the field of science of the recent curriculum (Hirai et al. 2011). On the other hand, as urbanization is proceeding, people are gathering into city where the places with soil are scarce. Under such circumstances it would be important to analyze an interest and recognition of necessity on soil of elementary school pupils and junior high school students who are engaged with the present educational guideline. Therefore, soil education committee of Japanese Society of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition made a decision to conduct a questionnaire survey on soil in 2015. The questions in the questionnaire are; Q1. Are there places with soil around where you live, such as a rice field, forest, park or garden? Q2. Would you like to have places with soil around where you live? Q3. If you replied that you preferred to have a place with soil, what are your reasons? Q4. If you answered that you preferred not to have places with soil around in Q2, what are your reasons? Q5. In what situations have you touched soil? Q6. Circle all of the functions of soil that you think are useful in the lives of people, animals and plants which you are familiar with. Q7. Would you like to know more about soil? After the questionnaire survey, it was revealed that the questionnaire was answered by 5,396 pupils in the elementary schools and 3,472 students in the junior high schools. The results were partly summarized as follows: 1) The percentage of those who replied “I would like to have as many as possible” for Q2 decreased with increasing grade. The highest value was 48.3 % of 1^st grader of elementary school, while the lowest was 27.5 % of 3^rd grader of junior high school. The recognition of necessity on soil would be decreasing with increasing age. 2) The percentage of those who replied Q5 with “When working with flower pots” decreased with increasing grade. The highest value was 71.0 % of 1^st grader of the elementary school, while the lowest was 23.1 % of 3^rd grader of junior high school. Moreover, almost the same tendency was observed for “When taking a class at school”, that is, the highest value was 69.6 % of 1^st grader of elementary school, while the lowest was 27.1 of 3^rd grader of junior high school. 3) The percentage of those who replied “I would like to know as much as possible about soil” for Q7 decreased with increasing age. The highest value was 66.1 % of 2^nd grader of elementary school, while the lowest value was 14.5 % of 3^rd grader of junior high school.

How to cite: Hirai, H., Toma, M., and Akahane, I.: Analyses of interest and recognition of necessity on soil by elementary school pupils and junior high school students based on a questionnaire survey on soil in Japan, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-14833, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-14833, 2020.

To commemorate the 2015 International Year of Soil, the Spanish Society of Soil Science (SECS-Territorial Delegation of Galicia) and the University of Santiago de Compostela published the comic Living in the soil, with the aim of raising awareness amongst young people the importance of soil and the need to protect it. The initial version, Vivir no solo, published by the Galician Culture Council, was modified and adapted  to the current  specific scenarios of the countries where it was edited, and translated  to Spanish, English and Italian as well as other languages (Galician, Catalan) for broadcasting it both at nationally at international level. In 2018 and 2019, the Spanish, Italian and Catalan versions were re-edited to commemorate the Decade International of Soils 2015-2024. All comic versions, including the English one, were edited in both paper (a total of 80.000 copies) and web format, the latter are available in the SECS web page (www.secs.com.es/publicaciones/).

Since 2015 up to now, the comic has been successful used in many projects/activities carried out in various institutions (Educational Centers, Natural Parks, Museums, Nature Associations, soil-related Institutions). The soil is a hidden resource very little known to the public. It is under our feet, but we can´t see it because it is covered by vegetation. However, agricultural or forest soil is a living systems, it is the home to a huge diversity of organisms of different sizes that perform important ecological functions and others linked to human activities. The protagonists of the comic are a snail, an earthworm and a mole that inhabit the soil as well as a group of young people who, trying to solve a problem of soil use management that occurs in a little village, show us several important soil aspects (concept, components, functions, threats, degradation, protection and restoration). Events, etc). Some examples of these events are: Science City Project: Living in the soil, 2015, Spanish Research Council  (CSIC), 2015; Would life on the planet be possible without the soil,  SECS, CSIC, 2019; Vivere nel Suolo: Giornata di Legalitá Ambientale; Vivere nel Suolo and Giornata Mondiale  del suolo,  SECS, Italian Society of Soil Science, Parco dei Nebrodi, European Soil Science Conservation, 2018-2019. Considering the success of all these events, it seems that the comic “Living in the soil” has a great potential as an innovative and attractive publication of great interest to disseminate and raise awareness worldwide about the importance of this non-renewable resource for maintaining life on the planet.

 Acknowlegments. All persons and organizations that participate in this initiative of the edition (2015) and re-edition (2018, 2019) of the comic in the different languages.  

How to cite: Díaz-Raviña, M., Barral-Silva, M. T., Arias-Estévez, M., and Mataix-Solera, J.: An innovative and attractive comic to transmit the message of soil importance to the Society: Living in the soil , EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-22019, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-22019, 2020.

Soil is the foundation for plant growth, animal habitats, and human society; however, there are few people focus on the soil nowadays. Soil courses are limited in the current curriculum education of elementary and high schools in Taiwan. The soil exhibition tour was thus conducted and its main objective is to improve the understanding of soil resources and its importance on social human beings and environmental quality, especially for school students. The lessons about soil science and the new expression of art combined with the environment were prepared to convey. Graduate students firstly guided children to the school’s cropland on their campus and sampled soil by auger. Then they taught children how to describe the soil color via Munsell soil color charts, structure, consistence, and to determine textural class by feel method while going on a soil survey out of the classroom. Another topic, since the soil color was determined by developing processes and environmental conditions, it would be several kinds of hue. We collected soil samples from different counties in Taiwan. Teaching children doing the watercolor made of soil themselves and drawing the postcards, which shows the major soil characteristics, such as, textural triangle, six ecological functions, and soil profile on the cover following. The detail of the activities can be adjusted according to the population and the age of the participants; hence it’s suitable for general adults or students in the elementary and high schools.

How to cite: Lai, H.-Y., Tseng, W.-Y., Yen, Y.-S., Chen, K.-S., and Fong, C.-J.: Soil Education for General Public and School Students in Taiwan, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-87, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-87, 2020.

In the science curriculum in Japan, as Mori et al. (2019) examined the content of course of study for elementary schools, there are opportunities to plant and grow plants in soil, and to learn about the erosion, movement, and deposition of sediment. However, the science curriculum does not include specific learning content about the characteristics and functions of soil. Furthermore, in the new course of study to be implemented in 2020 (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2017), an emphasis is placed on science education aimed at the prevention of natural disasters (sediment-related disasters caused by localized rainfall, etc.), which have caused substantial damage in Japan recently. Thus, in the current reality of science education in Japan, there are no occasions for teaching about how ordinary soil supports our lives and affluent living.
The purpose of this study is to obtain suggestions on what should be taught at schools about soil by conducting a survey of university students who received such school education in Japan, to investigate their level of comprehension regarding the characteristics and functions of soil. 
The survey was conducted in October 2019 in Tochigi Prefecture. Participants comprised 253 first-year university students who had just graduated from a high school (78 students majoring in humanities and social sciences, 175 students majoring in agricultural studies). The survey was in the form of a questionnaire. Soil’s “water retention” function received particular attention in this study. To survey the students’ understanding, they were asked the following two open-ended questions. Question 1: Why do plants require watering to grow? Question 2: How can weeds that grow on the roadside do so without watering? The first question was intended to examine the students’ understanding of why plants require watering to grow, while the second question was intended to assess their understanding of the water retention function of soil.
The most common answer to the first question was “Water is necessary for the growth of plants.” Sixty-five students majoring in humanities and social sciences and 165 students majoring in agricultural studies provided this answer. Approximately 25% of these students mentioned the mechanism of photosynthesis. Nearly half of the students answered, “because weeds are strong,” to the second question, which was the common answer. Twenty-six students majoring in humanities and social sciences and 77 students majoring in agricultural studies answered, “because it rains,” which was the second most common answer to the second question. Only four students majoring in agricultural studies, all of whom had attended university lectures on dendrology, were able to answer with reference to the water retention function of soil. 
The responses provided in this survey indicate that while the students were taught that plants require water for growth, they were not educated about soil and its functions that are necessary for this process, which arguably shows the results of the science curriculum in Japan. Thus, it is necessary to develop teaching materials and lessons that will educate students about the characteristics and functions of ordinary soil. 

How to cite: Yokoo, E., Masuda, A., Deguchi, A., and Hirai, H.: How much do Japanese university students know about soil? A survey of university students who received science education in Japanese schools, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-4029, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-4029, 2020.

This study aims to highlight the importance of topsoil in human life from the viewpoint of daily rice consumption in Japan. A questionnaire on rice and/or soil was distributed to elementary, junior high, and high school students and university students in order to investigate how much they know about soil and its importance. The results were reported using an earlier study (Hirai and Hirai, 2015). The findings revealed that most of the students recognized the soil function of plant production, but few recognized the area of paddy fields required to produce the amount of average rice consumed per person per year in Japan. In order to convey the importance of topsoil, an interactive class on “rice” was conducted with students in October 2019, as part of a soil education program. Before it, a rice hill with topsoil of 15 cm was taken from a paddy rice field and kept in a plastic container. We chose rice as the topic because Japanese students can easily relate to it. Students were told that to produce 150 g of edible rice, 70 g of dried rice is used. As part of an activity, they were asked to: 1) Count grains in 2 g of dried rice, and then calculate the number of grains in 70 g dried rice, 2) Observe a rice hill with topsoil , 3) Count the number of panicles of the rice plant and the number of rice hull in a panicle, 4) Multiply the number of rice hull with the panicle number to obtain the total number of rice hulls, and 5) Measure the total area and the weight of the topsoil. Thus, the students could understand how many rice hills with topsoil of 15 cm depth with a certain area are required to produce 150 g of edible rice. The students were also asked to touch and feel the soil and the rice plants, following a presentation about their learnings and findings. After this activity, a lecture from a professor of soil science was delivered. Moreover, the following questionnaire survey was conducted before and after the soil educational program aiming at recognizing the importance of soil. The number of participating students was 19, consisting of 5^th and 6^th graders of primary school and 1^st to 3^rd graders of junior high school. The following questions were asked: Q1. Would you like to have places with soil around where you live? Q2. If you prefer to have a place with soil around, what are the reasons behind it? Q3. Would you like to know more about soil? The number of students who answered Q2 with “because having a place with soil stops groundwater from drying up” increased from 5 to 15 after the program. In case of Q3, the number of students who answered “I would like to know as much as possible” increased from 10 to 18. Moreover, it is noteworthy that attendants stressed on touching the soil and measuring the area under rice plant cultivation.

How to cite: Masuda, A., Yokoo, E., Hirai, H., and Deguchi, A.: Highlighting the importance of topsoil in human life through a soil education program, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-4030, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-4030, 2020.

The importance of and role that soil plays in ensuring the future sustainability of human and planetary health is well established and the emerging soil security concept clearly identifies that education is a crucial component to ensure the securing soil to be fit for this purpose. Traditionally education in soil science has been limited to developing expertise in the discipline. To be truly effective we need to go beyond the boundaries of the discipline, and even its natural home of academia, and begin to explore the types of learning that can be developed to engage the whole community and raise our collective connectivity with soil.

Previously theoretical frameworks based around the dimensions of to ‘know’, ‘know of’ and ‘be aware’ of soil have been accepted by the education community as well as experiential learning practices framed by the teaching-research-Industry-learning (TRIL) models. There is now the emerging question of the need for a set of newly proposed set of principles, in the same way as a set of elementary assumptions have been developed for disciplines in biology and geology, which will impact the design of learning and its engagement within the disciplinary and broader community. Starting with the Pedon this elementary level will ensure awareness of soil. Coupled with outward focused responsibility of providing salient knowledge together with the social intelligence will use the second principle of Processes to provide resolution to soil related problems. Traditionally, this knowledge is often used to tackle well know threats, but more recently the advances in digital soil mapping and decreasing soil modelling have enabled greater interdisciplinary opportunities to solve soil knowledge based around the principles of variation and ultimately forecasting soil change.

This paper will align the set of principles against the current soil science education practices and how these can be used to engage with the broader community outside of academia.  

How to cite: Field, D.: Do we need to new set of soil principles to guide the cross-sector engagement of soil education, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-8810, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-8810, 2020.

Since plants are sessile due to their nature, they encounter- simultaneously or at different times numerous and various biotic and non-biotic stressors during their life span. Also, the severity and impacts of the stressors vary corresponding to the development stages and organs of the plant. Of the stress factors, salinity is considered as a major environmental constraint imposing limitations on growth, development, crop productivity, and quality of the plants in many regions of the world. Therefore, the studies concerned with salinity and its effects on plants are of the fundamental interests for agricultural issues. In order to alleviate the possible damages of salinity, exogenous applications of salicylic acid are of the common techniques used.  Herewith the study, the profiles of original and review articles under the topic of salicylic acid and salinity were examined by bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer tool. Along with the present study, it was aimed to answer the following research questions (RQ) associated to the researches regarding salt stress and salicylic acid interaction.

RQ1: Which plant species have been more focused for the studies?

RQ2: What kind of biochemical, physiological and molecular parameters have been used for analysis?

RQ3: How important the concentration of salicylic acid is? How important the mode of application of salicylic acid is?

RQ4: What are the research trends regarding salinity stress and salicylic acid considering the number and year of the publications, number of authors, main theme of the studies, country of the publications, core journals, the most cited documents etc.?

RQ5:  What is the spatial distribution of the researches? Do salinity stress faced countries mostly carry out the studies or not, considering the attributes influential on the performing the studies?

SCOPUS database was used for retrieving the related documents. For extracting documents, the following selection or limitation criteria were applied to profile the study concerned with salicylic acid and salinity interaction; (TITLE-ABS-KEY (salicylic AND acid)) AND (salt AND stress OR NaCl OR saline AND conditions OR salinity) AND (LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, "AGRI") OR LIMIT-TO (SUBJAREA, “BIOC")). Accordingly, 2,067 document results were retrieved. Then all documents were selected and exported to the CSV Excel. The documents were analyzed and visualized using VOSviewer tool. 

Accordingly, two main salicylic acid research clusters according to the most relevant terms were identified. First cluster was composed of abiotic stress terms and related antioxidant activity and enzymes. The first cluster can be considered as biochemistry and abiotic stress. The second cluster was related to the biotic stress factors and molecular biology approaches. For the keyword analysis, various clusters regarding hormonal cross-talks, antioxidant enzymes with oxidative stress, biotic stress factors, and osmoprotectants were composed. According to the country analysis, China, United States, Pakistan, South Korea, and Oman were grouped together in same cluster. India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia were in the same cluster. The results were discussed in comparison.

Keywords: Salicylic acid, salinity, bibliometric analysis, abiotic and biotic stress

How to cite: Kulak, M. and Kilic, N.: A bibliometric analysis: How important is salicylic in response to the salinity from NaCl?, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-1302, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-1302, 2020.

Mountain regions are affected by various natural hazards, of which gravitational mass movements are some of the most important ones. Due to the accumulation of settlements and intense economic activities in exposed areas, mountain regions such as the Alps constitute a risk hot-spot. The threat posed by gravitational natural hazards to human activities affirms the strong need for risk management, particularly for prevention. Structural measures are increasingly applied in combination with land use planning and ecosystem-based solutions. In particular, ecosystem-based solutions not only prevent the initiation of the processes but also act as a protective barrier. These green measures have been gaining an increasing attention also due to their adaptability to respond to the challenges posed by global change. Systematic reviews on how ecosystems can be used for disaster risk reduction have been carried out; however, their focus is on urban and coastal environments or on specific natural hazards such as shallow landslides. Up to now, there is no systematic review which addresses the role of ecosystems in disaster risk reduction regarding multiple gravitational natural hazards in mountain areas.

This contribution provides such a systematic review aimed at filling this knowledge gap to give a direction for future research. The review is composed of two main parts: a quantitative bibliometric analysis followed by a qualitative review. The quantitative part, based on the Scopus peer-reviewed database, aimed to investigate the publication trend on the ecosystem-based solutions for gravitational natural hazard mitigation by comparing it with the general trend of published scientific documents. The bibliometric analysis also served as a basis to select most relevant articles on which to conduct the subsequent qualitative analysis. The content of the so selected publications was analysed qualitatively the following  predefined criteria: the natural hazards addressed, the features of the ecosystem (i.e. forest species composition, management activities, effectiveness in risk mitigation), the development of alternative scenarios to test different hypothesis, the degree of stakeholder involvement, and the monetary evaluation of the measures (i.e. comparing them to structural measures). Results show a sharp increase in the number of publications on the topic from 1980 to 2018 compared to the overall number of documents published on Scopus. Although the overall topic is gaining more attention in scientific literature, the in-depth qualitative analysis revealed that research still pays little attention to stakeholder involvement and an economic evaluation of measures. We conclude that filling this research gap might help to foster a wider adoption of ecosystem-based solutions for disaster risk reduction across mountain areas.

How to cite: Cocuccioni, S., Poratelli, F., Accastello, C., Steger, S., Schneiderbauer, S., and Brun, F.: Ecosystem-based solutions for gravitational natural hazard mitigation: a review on the use of protection forests for disaster risk reduction in mountain areas, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-7577, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-7577, 2020.

Durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) is a crucial food crop and has occupied important areas in Tunisia. However, its production remains low and unstable even though the effort of intensification of this crop has been undertaken for many decades. Likewise, Nitrogen (N) is a major limiting input factor for the crop production. In this vein, the main objective of this meta-analysis is to quantify N-use efficiency of N-fertilizer (NUE) of durum wheat in Tunisia from published studies according to the type of crop management and bioclimatic zone. Nine hundred thirty-six observations (including grain yield and NUE as dependent variables) were extracted from 51 published studies, corresponding to trials conducted in rain-fed or irrigated, and conducted in conventional system or no-tillage. The results demonstrated that yields obtained within the experimental studies were below the cultivar potential yield, even at irrigated conditions. The grain yields obtained in no-tillage trials were lower (-26%) than those in conventional tillage ones. On the other hand, N-use efficiency was small and varied between 36 and 58 kg kg^-1 N depending on the bioclimatic zone. Overall, the effect of irrigation on N-use efficiency was significantly positive (+16.4 kg kg^-1 N; p <0.05) under conventional systems. Whereas NUE response to no-tillage was significantly negative (-12.1 kg kg^-1 N; p <0.001) under rain-fed conditions. This latter is due mainly to the limitation of conservation agriculture (CA) in Tunisia to only no tillage practice and the negligence of the two other principles of CA namely crop rotations/species diversity, and soil cover by crop residues (at least 30% of the soil surface covered by crop residue at crop sowing). Therefore, enhancing N-use efficiency of durum wheat in Tunisia is paramount to increase production and avoid nitric pollution issues. This feature involves a best management of N-fertilization via synchronizing the timing and quantity of the nitrogen supply with the plant needs, and via using decision-making tools such as chlorophyll meter SPAD and GreenSeeker^®, in order to accomplish this synchronization. The nexus between water and nitrogen in the soil is essential since it has conditioned the nitrogen use by durum in Mediterranean conditions.

How to cite: Souissi, A., Bahri, H., Cheikh M’hamed, H., and Annabi, M.: Effects of nitrogen fertilization on yield and nitrogen-use efficiency of durum wheat in Tunisia: a meta-analysis, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-1139, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-1139, 2020.

Systematic bibliometric investigations are useful to evaluate and compare the scientific impact of journal papers, book chapters and conference proceedings. Such studies allow the detection of emerging research topics, the analyses of cooperation networks, and the collection of in-depth insights into a specific research topic. In the presented work, we carried out a bibliometric study in order to obtain an in-depth knowledge on soil erosion modelling applications worldwide.

As a starting point, we used the soil erosion modelling meta-analysis data collection generated by the authors of this abstract in a joint community effort. This database contains meta-information of more than 3,000 documents published between 1994 and 2018 that are indexed in the SCOPUS database. The documents were reviewed and database entries verified. The database contains various types of meta-information about the modelling studies (e.g., model used, study area, input data, calibration, etc.). The bibliometric information was also included in the database (e.g., number of citations, type of publication, Scopus category, etc.). We investigated differences among publication types and differences between papers published in journals that are part of various Scopus categories. Moreover, relationships between publication CiteScore, number of authors, and number of citations were analyzed. A boosted regression tree model was used to detect the relative impact of the selected meta-information such as erosion model used, spatial modelling scale, study period, field activity on the total number of citations. Detailed investigation of the most cited papers was also conducted. The VOSviewer software was used to analyze citations, co-citations, bibliographic coupling, and co-authorship networks of the database entries.  

Our bibliometric investigations demonstrated that journal publications, on average, receive more citations than book series or conference proceedings. There were differences among the erosion models used, and some specific models such as the WaTEM/SEDEM model, on average, receive more citations than other models (e.g., USLE). It should also be noted that self-citation rates in case of most frequently used models were similar. Global studies, on average, receive more citations than studies dealing with plot, regional, or national scales. According to the boosted regression tree model, model calibration, validation, or field activity do not have significant impact on the obtained publication citations. Co-citation investigation revealed some interesting patterns. Our results also indicate that papers about soil erosion modeling also attract citations from different fields and better international cooperation is needed to advance this field of research with regard to its visibility and impact on human societies.    

How to cite: Bezak, N. and the Soil Erosion Modelling Team: A global bibliometric perspective on soil erosion modelling , EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-2919, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-2919, 2020.

We illustrate how the use of scientometric methods and tools can facilitate the scanning and interpretation of large volumes of scientific outputs and benefit the literature review of a scientific topic, reducing the cognitive burden to identify emerging trends and shifts in scientific interest. We rely on a corpus of publications about permafrost which proves to be a fast-growing and multifaceted object of study in the geosciences (16,267 references retrieved from Scopus and published since the 1970s) and undertake a scientometric approach to understand the knowledge about permafrost that has been produced and disseminated so far. 

With the rise of digital technology and the increase in the amount of data available, scientometrics has benefited in its methods from text-mining and datavisualisation tools, thus enabling maps to be drawn up to visually represent the semantic space of a textual corpus (for example with networks representing graphically the proximity between strongly related terms) and to observe its dynamics over time.

We outline the benefits of 2 scientometric tools and a few of their specific functions: CiteSpace, for a structural analysis based on bibliographic data (e.g. co-citation networks to reveal underlying intellectual structures) and Cortext, for a lexicometric analysis based on terms extracted from metadata and press articles (e.g. co-occurrence networks to detect trends and transition patterns). First, we tackled the corpus in a global and objective way, without presupposing which fields have been involved. Then we focused on one particular field (civil engineering) to demonstrate how we can better feed these tools with terms extracted from a corpus of press articles mentioning construction and building issues.

In this longitudinal study, we use 3 units of analysis and evaluate their frequencies, shares and patterns of co-occurrences: disciplinary fields (retrieved via Scopus journal classification scheme), terms (automatically extracted from titles, abstracts and keywords and validated by similar extraction on media articles and expert review), geographical areas (automatically extracted with Name Entity Recognition function, and investigated both as a field of study and also as information about countries interested in any aspect of permafrost).

We can then show and explain the increasing share of publications about permafrost, the ever-growing number of disciplinary fields involved along with content fluctuations in the engineering field, the emergence of new associations between terms and in particular with "climate change", and the significant impact of studies about the Qinghai-Tibet plateau.

The focus on civil engineering allows us to perform contrast analyses with other sub-corpuses (about climate change or environmental sciences) and to identify the existing overlaps but mostly the gaps to be filled.

With this case study on permafrost, we show how scientometric tools can meet the need for objectivity in extensive literature reviews when fake news and climate scepticism are threats to science integrity and the sound dissemination of its results. Besides, we provide for more knowledge about the development of research on permafrost and initiate a particular focus on civil engineering issues providing evidence for future works.

How to cite: Bordignon, F.: Extracting value from scientific literature with scientometric methods and tools: a case study of permafrost and civil engineering, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-4566, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-4566, 2020.

Conservation agriculture (CA) is characterized by minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover, and diversification of crop species, as stated by FAO in 2017. Many CA experiments, however, have been carried out so far, by taking into account only one or two of the three principles. Therefore, the meta-analyses recently published may fail in giving correct results about the CA effectiveness on agroecosystem variables, mostly on soil organic carbon (SOC) content or stock.

In preparation of conducting a meta-analysis, the present study was carried out to collect published results about the effect of the concurrent adoption of the three CA principles on SOC under Mediterranean climate with a systematic literature search in Scopus and Web of Science. Initially, a single nested query has been applied to both the database, using the Boolean operators, in order to include all the international literature about CA experiments and SOC variable without climate filter at this step. The resulting raw files were downloaded and merged in a unique dataframe using R software with "Bibliometrix" package¹, which is an open-source tool developed for bibliometric analysis. The use of merged dataframe has mainly two advantages: it allows an easy duplicate removal (847 records in our case) and a more detailed information research both automatic and manual. Bibliometrix indeed provides tools for bibliometric analysis and data matrices building for co-citation, coupling, and co-word analysis highlighting, for example, that in the European continent both Italy and Spain are the most productive countries on these topics.
With these possibilities, as a further step, a new sub dataframe has been extracted by using the Köppen classification for Mediterranean climate (sub-climates, Csa/Csb/Csc), allowing a reduction of 32% of the records.

1) Aria, M., Cuccurullo, C., 2017. Bibliometrix: An R-tool for comprehensive science mapping analysis, Journal of Informetrics, 11(4).

How to cite: Tadiello, T. and Acutis, M.: Effect of conservation agriculture on soil organic carbon sequestration in Mediterranean region. A systematic map., EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-796, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-796, 2020.

Management practices aiming to improve crop yields may have adverse effects on soil or environmental quality, whereas the reverse can also be true. There is a need for a better understanding of synergies and trade-offs of nutrient, crop and soil management impacts on agronomic and environmental indicators , taking into account a variety of regional agro-ecosystem properties.

Well-known key indicators in this context are crop yield, nutrient uptake and use efficiency, soil organic carbon (SOC) and nutrient content, soil compaction, GHG emissions, and nutrient surpluses. Meta-analysis is a valuable way to assess the magnitude of agricultural management impacts over multiple sites and years, assessing the overall effect from many empirical observations. As many meta-studies exist in the literature to quantify the effects of agricultural management practices, we are the first presenting an integrated overview of those published studies on the above-mentioned impacts simultaneously. We focused on management principles for sustainability, including crop rotation and residue incorporation, irrigation, tillage, the “4R” principles of right fertilizer source, rate, timing, and placement, as well as enhanced efficiency and biochar amendments.

We find that various management-impact relationships are covered by meta-studies, but there is a lack of holistic analysis of site properties (and their interactions), which control the effects of management measures. Since current meta-studies allow limited conclusions on the effects of specific soil and climate agro-ecosystem properties, better analyses of site-specific conditions are needed.

When multiple meta-studies report effect sizes for the same management impact and given indicators, we further synthesized the results by a weighted mean based on reported measures of variation. Our synthesis produced almost 2000 impact assessments of agronomic measures from meta-analysis papers, providing a valuable quantitative resource for scientists and stakeholders in agriculture. For example, when comparing best management practices relating to fertilizer source, tillage, and crop rotation, our results indicate combined fertilizer as most effective in reducing N surplus, organic fertilizer as most effective in increasing SOC, and no tillage as most effective in increasing yields.

Our review also focuses on key characteristics relating to quality and methodological approaches in meta-analysis. For example, a surprising number of meta-studies do not perform a weighted analysis, which we consider an important quality standard. In general, our insights are relevant for the state of meta-analysis in agricultural science, which can be considered a recently developed focus of research.

How to cite: Young, M., de Vries, W., and Ros, G. H.: A systematic synthesis of agricultural management impacts on crop yield, soil quality, and environment, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-12956, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-12956, 2020.

To collate all the prior information about modelling the soil bulk density (BD) in Mediterranean climate agro-ecosystems at a world-scale, a systematic map was carried out. The strength of the systematic map approach is the collection of all the international peer review publications available in different archives that allows for the historical track of the topic developments.

To estimate BD, the most common approach is the use of Pedotransfer functions (PTFs). In this study, a search query was developed to find out all the already published PTFs for BD estimation and the search was carried out on the two most used citation database of peer-reviewed literature, namely SCOPUS and Web of Science (WoS).

The Bibliometrix package developed by Aria and Cuccurullo (2017) was used to map the main bibliometric information, extracted from Scopus and WoS. Following the systematic map procedure, we carried out a search on title, abstract and keywords using the following query: (bulk  AND density  AND  pedotransfer)  OR  (bulk  AND density  AND Mediterranean)) that yielded 750 results in Scopus and 889 in WoS.

Alternatively, ((bulk density  AND  pedotransfer)  OR  (bulk density AND Mediterranean)  AND NOT  (forest  OR  amazon*  OR  petrol*))  AND  (LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE , article)  OR LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, review)), which have yielded 717 and 567 records in WoS and Scopus respectively, of which the 30% were found in both database.

The researches were published between 1989 and 2020. The final database consists of 889 articles coming from 243 different journals. The average annual publication growth rate was 4%, but in 2019 it was the 10%. United States was the most productive country with more than 90 articles published, as it was confirmed by the number of publications found in Geoderma and the American Soil Science journal with 20 and 15 % respectively. We found that less than 5% of the records were relevant to our target objective.

This search provided a background in terms of variables used to build the PFT, methodologies used (e.g. multiple linear, nonlinear regression, machine learning), and detailed land use. Given the importance of SOC stock for carbon sequestration and soil fertility, a PTFs is a valid tool to estimate the BD and therefore the amount of SOC in Mediterranean agro-ecosystems.

How to cite: Acutis, M. and the SDAE 2019 team: Pedotransfer function to predict soil bulk density in Mediterranean agro-ecosystems, a systematic map., EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-16930, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-16930, 2020.

Barley is a widespread crop in the Mediterranean area and in temperate climates. Barley impact in the food chain is very important for its value as food and feed. The societal demand is for more productive varieties, which can be able to cope with the current and future climate scenarios. Change in climate is expected to result in more adverse conditions for the barley growth and alter land suitability in its growing regions, such as the Mediterranean basin. In this context, laboratory and modelling activities for the so-called “in silico ideotyping” can be effectively carried out to design new germplasms and to define optimal field management practices. As a first step to reach this objective, we collate the available scientific research about the identification of optimal phenotypic traits for the adaptation to harsh environments. In the framework of the GENDIBAR project (Utilization of local genetic diversity for studying barley adaptation to harsh environments and for pre-breeding; PRIMA European Funding Programme), a bibliometric analysis was carried out in the SCOPUS database with the aim to find published papers about barley adaptation in relation to changing climate. The initial query was (barley AND climate AND adaptation); it contained few keywords and resulted in less than 200 publications. By adding (barley AND ideotyping OR barley AND phenotyping), the search reached 450 records. The most comprehensive search was achieved by adding another OR condition (Barley AND future climate OR climate change) that yielded more than 1000 results. Although these records seemed relevant, a deeper analysis showed that less than 5% of these studies are of real interest and moreover the manual screening of the abstracts of all records will require around a month of work. The second query represents a compromise between the simplest query (barley AND climate AND adaptation) and the last query made by three conditions bonded together. This literature search approach highlighted the results of manipulative experiments and modelling studies for deriving phenotyping and agronomic traits to address in-silico ideotyping design. However, the search outcome suggests that there is a gap of knowledge about the barley phenotypic traits needed to cope with climate change in the semi-arid and arid regions of the Mediterranean basin. This approach is expected to further provide useful information for the development of land suitability models, as well as for barley breeding.

How to cite: Fricano, A., Mica, E., Battaglia, R., Tondelli, A., Schillaci, C., and Perego, A.: Barley ideotyping for the adaptation to heat stress in the Mediterranean basin. A bibliometric search approach, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-21316, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-21316, 2020.

Soil education is one of the major topics to be enhanced and promoted in the International Decade of Soils 2015-2024 (IDS) project of the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS). The book entitled above has been just published by the IUSS to provide readers, who are interested in soils, geosciences, environment, ecosystems, art, etc. and may be teaching in schools at elementary through university levels, working at museums, educational or extension organizations and serving for NPOs, NGOs, etc., with basic framework of soil and soil science education and a collection of good practices currently employed, so that the readers could learn and share with whatever suited to their own condition efficiently.
The book consists of three parts, i.e. framing soil science education, good practices in soil education and future of soil and soil science education. The first part gives tenets and framework of soil education in pre and primary school, under- and post-graduate students and the general public or citizen. The second includes practical methods for soil and soil science education from all over the world, i.e. 1 from Africa, 3 from Asia, 3 from Europe, 2 from North America, 5 from South America and 2 from Oceania, which have been evaluated useful, efficient and promising in their own environments and situations. The final part is devoted for discussing the challenges and future of soil and soil science education. 
The IUSS is planning to distribute the above publication to a variety of societies so that the current contents and methods and the systems of soil and soil science education be criticized for further improvement towards promoting and enhancing research, education and public awareness of soils as one of the disciplines of geo- and bio-sciences in the future.

How to cite: Kosaki, T., Lal, R., and Bertha Reyes Sánchez, L.: “Soil Education Manual - Toolbox for DIY program at your classroom” by International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS), EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-21359, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-21359, 2020.

Environmental changes have been studied in numerous local scale studies all around the world. They provide invaluable evidence on the causes and consequences of the way we use and change the environment. However, it remains unknown, how we can use this evidence beyond the study area boundaries, which limits the transferability of potential more sustainable solutions. We present a novel, interdisciplinary workflow on how to combine systematic reviews and meta-analyses with spatial analysis on the example of land use change. First, we performed a systematic review on local scale land use change. The collected studies were used to generate a classification of different actors behind land use change using clustering. Secondly, using the documented case study evidence, we statistically analysed how the location influences the spatial distribution of these studies. We used data on socio-economic, soil, terrain and climate variables. Using the derived statistical relationships, we were able to map the spatial likelihood of the studies, and how representative the study collection is for other parts of the world. The results enabled us to identify areas, which are similar to the meta-analysis collection. Conversely, areas that are very different can be used to identify understudied areas where more research is necessary. The proposed workflow can be used across different domains of environmental and earth system sciences.

How to cite: Malek, Z. and Verburg, P.: From local studies to global patterns: Example of systematic reviews on local land use change to study global change processes, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-21475, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-21475, 2020.