Extreme climate and weather events, associated disasters and emergent risks are becoming increasingly critical in the context of global environmental change and interact with other stressors. They are a potential major threat to reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and one of the most pressing challenges for future human well-being. Nature-based solutions (NBS), defined as “'inspired and supported by nature, which are cost-effective, simultaneously provide environmental, social and economic benefits and help build resilience'”, are a fundamental part of the efforts to “repair the way we interact with nature”, established as a goal within the European Green Deal. NBS can provide multiple benefits, such as mitigating climate hazard risks (e.g. floods, droughts) and enhancing climate resilience. Although NBS have received increasing interest over the last years, there are still doubts regarding their efficacy in comparison with more well tested civil engineering solutions, depending on the type and magnitude of hazards and the robustness of the NBS. This session aims to explore the linkages between extreme climate and weather events, associated disasters, societal dynamics and resilience, as well as the technical, financial and operational feasibility and performance of NBS solutions. Specific topics include, but are not limited to:
• Impacts of extreme climate events (including risks emerging from compound events) and cascades of impacts on various aspects of ecosystems and societies;
• Key obstacles towards societal resilience and achievement of SDGs while facing climate extremes;
• Evidence-base of NBS solutions to support disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation;
• New methods and tools to investigate the role of NBS to enhance resilience and adaptation to climate change;
• Case studies of inspirational practice for successful implementation and upscaling of NBS projects;
• Financial instruments and business opportunities to stimulate NBS implementation;
• Future NBS performance under various climate change scenarios;
• Co-governance of climate mitigation and adaptation with NBS.

Several cross-boundary kinds of science are emerging in the field of geosciences.
Citizen science is gaining momentum across multiple disciplines, increasing multi-scale data production that is extending the frontiers of knowledge. Successful participatory science enterprises and citizen observatories can potentially be scaled-up in order to contribute to larger policy strategies and actions (e.g. the European Earth Observation monitoring systems), for example to be integrated in GEOSS and Copernicus. Making credible contributions to science can empower citizens to actively participate as citizen stewards in decision making, helping to bridge scientific disciplines.
Critical zone science is an integrative, transdisciplinary approach where the spatio-temporal interactions between life, energy and matter cycles in natural and anthropogenic environments are jointly considered through the combined lens of climatology, hydrology, soil science, ecology, geomicrobiology, biogeochemistry, geology and/or other fields. The number and richness of critical zone observatories established around the world are increasing and gaining strength (e.g., TERENO, OZCAR, DOE watersheds, eLTER).
Both citizen science and critical zone science can be seen in the context of Open Science, which is a broad movement embracing Open Data, Open Technology, Open Access, Open Educational Resources, Open Source, Open Methodology, and Open Peer Review. Increasingly, access to research data has become a core issue in the advance of science.
Open science, citizen science and critical zone science pose great challenges for researchers to facilitate effective participatory and actionable science, yet they are of critical importance to modern research and decision-makers.

We want to ask and find answers to the following questions:
Which approaches and tools can be used in Earth and planetary observation?
What are the biggest challenges in bridging geoscientific disciplines and how to overcome them?
How can we make knowledge on critical zone functioning transferable from one observatory to another place?
What kind of participatory citizen scientist involvement and open science strategies exist?
What kind of community-level perspectives exist regarding the limitations, challenges, and ethical considerations for collaborative, transdisciplinary and/or open science?
How can citizen science and open science approaches and initiatives be supported on different levels?

Soil erosion is a major global soil degradation threat to land, freshwater and oceans. Scientific understanding of all erosional physical processes controlling soil detachment, transportation, and deposition is vital when developing methods and conservation alternatives to minimize the impacts associated with soil degradation and support decision making.

This session will discuss the latest developments in soil erosion and closely associated land degradation processes in agriculture, forest and rangelands. Providing space for presenting and discussing:

• measurements - from rill to gully erosion, by means of field essays or laboratory experiments;
• monitoring - short to long-term assessments, by mean of local assessments or remote sensing techniques;
• modelling approaches – from plot to global scale, addressing current and future land and climate change demands;
• mitigation and restoration – to address on-site and off-site impacts on soils and water.

Our main objective is to scientifically discuss soil erosion processes and impacts but also to explore strategies that may help land stakeholders (farmers, land managers or policy makers), and support the ongoing initiatives aiming for land degradation neutrality by 2030 and the upcoming UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030).

Soils have a tremendous potential to mitigate and build resilience to climate change. However, key challenges about how to adapt, improve and optimize land management practises in order to maximize the potential soil ecosystem services whilst maximizing carbon sequestration. Particular challenges lie in soils that are subject to anthropogenic activities such as intensive agriculture, forestry or urbanization. Furthermore, spatial heterogeneity across different scales and environmental settings constitutes another challenge to extrapolate findings and build robust land use management strategies.
Increasing efforts are dedicated towards instrumentalising soils to sequester carbon whilst retaining or increasing productivity (e.g. the “4 per 1000" initiative), or increasing resilience (e.g. by reducing land degradation). From a governance perspective on a European level there is increasing interest in safeguarding soils as a strategic resource (e.g. EU Green Deal, European Joint Programme SOIL) to contribute to the ambitions of Zero Pollution agriculture and Farm to Fork Strategies, as well as the UN Sustainable Development Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
This session aims to discuss the potential for soils to contribute to climate neutrality and build resilience to climate change while maximising the synergy with soil health, and a clean environment. We welcome research including experimental and modelling studies addressing the following subjects:
- Studies on soil carbon sequestration related to management practises (e.g. tillage or fertilisation) especially from short- or long-term changes;
- Interactions between Climate Neutrality and land degradation reduction;
- Integration of digital tools, artificial intelligence and models in soil science to better support soil-related decision-making processes in achieving climate neutrality and climate resilience;
- Novel approaches to evaluate key soil ecosystem services such as soil carbon sequestration, water retention or nutrient cycling in integrative approaches for sustainable land use.

Soil is the function of soil forming factors. This basic principle of soil genesis lies behind the concept of soil memory: the capability of soil systems to imprint in their intrinsic features (environmental indicators) environmental conditions, thus keeping a memory of both current and past environments. Soils and paleosols can be studied to reconstruct environmental factors that were present during the time of their formation and to disentangle the relative influences of different environmental conditions, both local and regional, on soil formation.
Anthropogenic soils in archaeological settings provide valuable archives for geoarchaeological studies, with their stratigraphy and properties reflecting settlement life cycles (occupation, abandonment, and reoccupation) and land-use history. Land-use legacy soils also have enormous potential for process-related research.
Geophysical prospection and geospatial methods contribute to the detection and delimitation of buried structures as a prior step to an archaeological excavation, to the study of cultural heritage remains, and to paleosol and geoarchaeological studies.
This session is open to all contributions focused on the study of polygenetic soils and sediments; including paleosols, anthropogenic soils, and archaeological structures. The following aspects are of special consideration:
- The use of paleosols as records of present and former environments, both local and regional;
- Studies of soil memory linking pedogenesis and sedimentary processes;
- Anthropogenic soils and paleosols in archaeological contexts;
- Predictions of future soil changes as a result of changes in environmental conditions and/or land use, based on observed past soil responses to environmental changes;
- The methodological progress in the study of soil records (biochemical, geochemical, and micromorphological (sub-)microscopic techniques, interpretation of palaeoenvironmental data such as biomarker and isotope data, remote sensing or modelling methods, );
- Studies that combine geophysics (ground-penetrating radar, magnetics, electrical resistivity tomography, electromagnetic induction, seismics) with geospatial methods (photogrammetry, LIDAR, differential GNSS), to improve the data representation, increasing the understanding of the geophysical results;
- Studies of archaeological sites and structure characterization, with geophysical and geospatial methods, as well innovations in data acquisition and processing methods.

Human activity became a major player of global climatic and environmental change in the course of the Late Quaternary and became dominant during the Anthropocene. Consequently, it is crucial to understand these changes through the study of former human-environmental interactions at different spatial and temporal scales. Documenting the diversity of human responses and adaptations to climate, landscape and ecosystem change, natural disasters and varying natural resources availability in different regions of our planet, and vice versa, provides valuable opportunities to learn from the past. To do so, cross-disciplinary studies in geoarchaeology offer a chance to better understand archaeological records and landscapes in the context of human activity, and the hydroclimate-environment nexus, over time. This session seeks related interdisciplinary papers and specific geoarchaeological case-studies from both Earth Sciences and Archaeology/History that deploy various approaches and tools to address the reconstruction of former human-environmental interactions from the Palaeolithic through the modern period. Contributions may include (but are not limited to) insights about how people have coped with environmental disasters or abrupt changes in the past, how to define sustainability thresholds for farming or resource exploitation, or how to distinguish the baseline natural and human contributions to environmental changes. Ultimately, we would like to understand how strategies of human resilience and innovation can inform our modern policies for addressing the challenges of the emerging Anthropocene, a time frame dominated by human modulation of surface geomorphological processes and hydroclimatic conditions.

In recent years, the impacts of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have become increasingly obvious, not only causing global warming, but also leading to more extreme weather events such as heatwaves, drought and torrential rainfall. On top of this, changes in land use and land use intensification are also occurring. Such phenomena are known to impact soil biota, which in turn affects carbon and nutrient biogeochemical cycles along with numerous other soil functions. Understanding the effects of land use, environmental stress and climate change on soil communities and the processes they mediate is therefore critical for improving predictions of the resistance and resilience of terrestrial ecosystems to future global change. Furthermore, mounting knowledge suggests that a sustainable intensification of land use needs to include the conservation of processes and functions run by soil biota that are essential for self-preservation, highlighting a need to explicitly consider the services provided by soil biota.

The aim of this session is to elucidate the impacts of different aspects of global change and land use on soil microbial communities and soil biota at large, and their feedback to to soil functions and ecosystem services. We are particularly interested in empirical and modelling studies on the resilience and associated recovery dynamics of soil microorganisms to environmental disturbances, as well as on their resistance or adaptation mechanisms. Disturbances of interest range from gradual changes in atmospheric CO2 or temperature, to more punctuated and extreme weather events such as heatwaves, droughts and rewetting. We will also focus on the role of soil biology in delivering soil functions in systems formed by humans, e.g. agricultural, forests or restored sites and the synergies and trade-offs that occur within the bundle of soil functions. We aim to connect researchers from different disciplines and to create a discussion platform to review the current state-of-the-art, identify knowledge gaps, share ideas, and tackle new challenges in the field.

In this session, we emphasize two important aspects of organic matter formation and transformation in the soil system, namely the role of plant-microbial interactions at soil interfaces and the link of matter and energy fluxes in soil systems. Firstly, we address the central role of the rhizosphere in interactions with other biogeochemical interfaces, considering the active role of roots crossing, penetrating, and even forming aggregates, bio-pores, and detritus. The key for overcoming the knowledge gaps in rhizosphere interfaces research is to link rates of matter fluxes with their spatial and temporal dynamics as well as with their associated energy fluxes. This requires concerted efforts to combine methods from different disciplines like plant genomics, imaging, soil physics, chemistry, thermodynamics and microbiology.
Secondly, the session will address how thermodynamic considerations can help to understand the transformation, degradation and stabilization of soil organic matter (SOM). SOM is increasingly seen as being comprised of biomolecules that are the result of microbial metabolism, including microbial biomass components and microbial-processed plant compounds.
Heterotrophic living microbes require energy delivered by the oxidation of organic matter. Soil systems, their biodiversity and ecosystem services are thus underpinned by mass and energy flows of organic compounds, in particular at hotspots of microbial activity, e.g. the rhizosphere. The formation of bio- and necromass as well as the storage of SOM are subjected to the laws of thermodynamics. Exploring the measurement of the SOM energy content and the regulation of the energy and matter flux processes has the potential to complete the knowledge of ecosystem control. In a wider perspective, bioenergetics and thermodynamics of soil systems may provide information on the development of sustainable and robust management of soils as ecological systems under climate change.
We therefore welcome experimental and modelling studies on rhizosphere functioning that aim at revealing spatial gradients of e.g. functional biodiversity of microorganisms, uptake and release patterns by roots, soil structure modification by root growth and feedbacks among them. This session also invites contributions presenting and discussing recent developments for the integration of thermodynamics in soil systems, including analytical developments as well as conceptual, empirical and modelling approaches.

Soil is the habitat for a myriad of organisms. These include soil fungi and fauna who are crucial in providing soil related ecosystem services, often through their interaction with microorganisms and plants. Soil fungi and fauna are key agents in litter decomposition, soil organic matter formation, and soil structure formation.
The polarized, network forming growth of fungi, their diverse ecological roles such as mutualistic interactions with plants, and unique suites of metabolic activities make them important players for many soil ecosystem functions.
The activity of soil fauna can result in the production of decomposition by-products which are still poorly chemically and physically characterized, despite the fact that they are a springboard for soil organic matter formation as well as a potential source of nutrients.
In this session, we cover a wide range of topics related to the effect of soil fungi and fauna on biogeochemical cycling (e.g., organic carbon storage, nutrient availability, gas emissions) in interaction with soil properties (e.g., aggregation, bioturbation, biopores, weathering), biodiversity relationships, and trophic interactions. These include studies on the effect of soil fungi and fauna on litter decomposition and the analyses of the decomposition by-products, as well as studies that explicitly tackle the interactions between soil fauna, plants, fungi, and other microorganisms.
Contributions cover the changing role of soil fauna and fungi under climate and land use changes and how this affects sustainable soil fertility.

Soil microorganisms decompose organic substrates to maintain their metabolic requirements and support growth. For growth and anabolic reactions, they require not only C and energy, but various nutrients (e.g., N and P) in stoichiometric relationships. Transformation of soil organic compounds therefore couples energy and matter flows via complex mechanisms dependent on environmental conditions and the intensity and efficiency of microbial metabolism. This coupling can be investigated from the perspective of microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE=ratio of biomass production to carbon substrate consumption), ecological stoichiometry, and microbial metabolic pathways. Elucidating the governing principles of energy and matter coupling is advancing through experimental work as well as modelling, with coupled matter and energy turnover now considered an essential feature of C cycling models.
This session invites experimental and modelling studies to understand how soil microbial life governs transformations of organic matter and the associated energy flows, with particular interest in growth, death, maintenance metabolism and necromass formation. In this context, this session also presents contributions on carbon and energy use efficiency as an indicator of microbial metabolism. These include CUE estimation in soil using advanced methods – isotope labelling, kinetic studies, isothermal calorimetry, and approaches disclosing the effect of microbial community composition and activity on CUE. We welcome innovative and interdisciplinary studies that are advancing the field of soil ecology from the understanding of biogeochemical processes to addressing global sustainability issues.

Soil systems harbor a high spatial complexity and soil architecture with diverse functions that shape biogeochemical matter cycles. In this session, we host novel studies that illuminate functional soil architectures and the spatial heterogeneity in soils from biological, physical, and chemical perspectives related to organic matter dynamics and other biogeochemical processes.

The advent of sophisticated instrumental techniques and advanced modeling tools has enabled studying soil structure, properties, and emerging functions. Spatially-explicit approaches extend our comprehension of heterogeneously distributed microbial habitats and processes, interactions of organic matter with mineral phases, and element storage. Aggregate structures and the void network of soil systems provides a dynamic scaffolding, which can protect soil components and influence local water retention and elemental distribution. Pedogenetic soil processes drive the differentiation at pedon scale and can result from a combination of small-scale processes determining soil ecosystem fluxes. Across different scale and structures, we look forward to discuss insights from microbial microenvironments via aggregated soil architecture up to the pedon scale.

This session is of interest to soil scientists with complementary biogeochemical and physical backgrounds working at different scales. The session responds to the growing awareness of the importance of spatial heterogeneity and architecture for ecosystem-relevant soil functions, such as the occlusion of organic residues, microbial colonization, provision of water and nutrients, and many more. We aim to present and discuss recent achievements, current obstacles, and future research directions to strengthen our conceptual understanding of the linkage of spatial heterogeneity and soil architecture with soil functions and organic matter dynamics across scales.

Soil organic matter (SOM) plays a vital role not only in soil fertility and quality (by providing a number of physical, chemical, and biological benefits), but also in carbon cycling. SOM contains a vast range of diverse organic structures, and also a living component (microorganisms) with various residence times that define the central role SOM plays in the soil. The decline of SOM represents one of the most serious threats facing many arable lands of the world. One of the efficient approaches to increase SOM content and decrease land degradation is the application of organic amendments, such as crop residues and animal manures. Nowadays, organic amendments originate from many kinds of organic wastes, which are being increasingly produced mainly by farms, agro-food industries, municipalities, and energy plants. Besides serving as a source of organic matter and plant nutrients, these materials may contribute to reduce soil contamination, erosion, and desertification, as well as mitigate climate change. At the same time, a safe and useful application of organic amendments requires an in-depth scientific knowledge of their nature and impacts on the SOM pools and factions, soil-plant system, as well as on the surrounding environment.
This session will combine the current research and recent advances on the use of organic amendments in modern agriculture as well as for the restoration of degraded soils. Field and laboratory studies focused on the effects of management practices, climate change, environmental conditions, soil properties are highly welcome.

Soil organic matter (SOM) is well known to exert a great influence on physical, chemical, and biological soil properties, thus playing a very important role in agronomic production and environmental quality. Globally SOM represents the largest terrestrial organic C stock, which can have significant impacts on atmospheric CO2 concentrations and thus on climate. The changes in soil organic C content are the result of the balance of inputs and losses, which strongly depends on the processes of organic C stabilization and protection from decomposition in the soil. This session will provide a forum for discussion of recent studies on the transformation, stabilization and sequestration mechanisms of organic C in soils, covering any physical, chemical, and biological aspects related to the selective preservation and formation of recalcitrant organic compounds, occlusion by macro and microaggregation, and chemical interaction with soil mineral particles and metal ions.

Soils represent a major terrestrial store of both organic and inorganic carbon. At present soils are a net carbon sink, and building soil carbon stocks holds significant potential for achieving net zero carbon. Furthermore, the storage, stability, and cycling of carbon is fundamental to the productivity and resilience of soil systems, and preserving and enhancing soil carbon stocks is critical for allowing sustainable agricultural intensification.

Avenues for organic carbon sequestration include plant-based inputs, the addition of pyrogenic carbon (biochar), and addition of composts or other additives such as manures and soil conditioners. Enhanced silicate weathering may hold significant potential for building inorganic carbon stocks, while inputs from bedrock, and mediation by land use changes such as afforestation, may also enhance inorganic soil carbon.

This session seeks to explore how soil carbon stocks can be increased so as to simultaneously enhance agricultural productivity, mitigate negative repercussions of changing environmental conditions and achieve carbon neutrality. Alongside this, advances in methods for monitoring and modelling rates of soil carbon loss or sequestration are key to inform political, agronomical, and geo-engineering approaches. We welcome contributions exploring methods of increasing and monitoring both organic and inorganic carbon stocks, and studies exploring the storage, stability, and cycling of carbon within soil systems. Early career researchers are strongly encouraged to apply, and we seek submissions considering empirical, modelling, or meta-analytical approaches.

Regulation of the cycles of carbon (C) and nutrients (N, P, S) in soils and ensuring their linkage and retention are recognized as major challenges, especially under shifts in environmental factors (warming, drought, N deposition, overfertilization, salinization, alterations of landscapes, biodiversity loss, invasion of species and intensification of land use). The processes underlying C and nutrient cycling in soils are difficult to evaluate and separate, since multiple factors can shift process rates and directions, as well as determine pool sizes. Factors also frequently have an interactive effect. Estimation of the magnitude of C and nutrient pool response and the temporal scale of reactions to land use change or shifts of environmental factors remains a major challenge. Thus, this session invites contributions focused on the evaluation of the soil C, N, P, and S pools and process responses under global change scenarios at the local as well as larger scales. Studies that combine short-term laboratory observation focused on process rate estimation with long-term field experiments and evaluation of pools are highly welcome. Studies that focus on the effect of soil chemistry, including an application of isotopes to investigate the process rates, mineralogy, as well as the transition from conventional to organic agriculture/land restoration, are also highly relevant.

Soil structure and its stability determine soil physical functions and chemical properties such as water retention, hydraulic conductivity, susceptibility to erosion, and redox potentials. These soil physical and chemical characteristics are fundamental for biological processes, among them root penetration and organic matter and nutrient dynamics. The soil pore network forms the habitat for soil biota, which in turn actively reshape it, often favorable to their needs. The soil biota, root growth, land management practices like tillage and abiotic drivers (e.g. wetting/drying cycles) lead to a constant evolution of the arrangement of pores, minerals and organic matter. With this, also the soil functions and properties are perpetually changing. The importance of the interaction between soil structure (and thus soil functions) on one side and soil biology, climate and soil management on the other, is highlighted by recent research outcomes, which are based on advanced imaging techniques, novel experimental setups and modelling approaches. Still, present studies have barely scratched the surface of what there is to discover.
In this session, we are inviting contributions on the formation and alteration of soil structure and its associated soil functions over time. Special focuses are on feedbacks between soil structure dynamics and soil biology as well as the impact of mechanical stress exerted by heavy vehicles deployed under land management operations. Further, we encourage submissions that are exploring new modelling concepts, integrating complementary measurement techniques or aim at bridging different scales.

Soils largely contribute to sustain agro-systems production and provide many ecosystem services that are essential for addressing sustainable land and water management. Management of both soil and water resources is a primary socio-economic concern that requires a detailed description of the physical and biological process that occur into the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum system. Nevertheless, measuring soil state variables and hydraulic parameters is often difficult due to the many complex nonlinear physical, chemical and biological interactions that simultaneously control the transfer of heat and mass. Infiltration experiments have been proposed as a simple mean to estimate soil hydraulic properties but their effectiveness is hampered by the effects of spatio-temporal variability across scales. High-resolution measurements of soil state variables, both over space and time, are thus crucial to describe and analyze soil hydraulic properties adequately and understand flow processes, including preferential flows.
The session focuses on the principles, capabilities, and applications of different techniques for monitoring state variables of soil and estimating soil hydraulic properties and accounting for preferential flows. Specific topics include, but are not limited to:

• Multiple measurement techniques and modelling approaches for determining state variables of soil;
• Innovative soil-water measurements techniques for linking the interactions of soil with plant and atmosphere compartments;
• Field infiltration techniques from a wide variety of devices in combination with dielectric and geophysical methods (i.e., TDR, FDR, GPR, ERT, etc.);
• Understanding the effect of physical processes and geochemical processes on the dynamics of macropore-fracture and preferential flows across scales;
• Understanding the contribution of preferential flow to flow and mass transport in the vadose zone;
• New or revisited numerical and analytical models to account for physical, chemical and biological interaction in the soil-water flow models (multiple-porosity, permeability, hydrophobicity, clogging, shrinking-swelling, or biofilm development);
• Use of pedotransfer functions based on limited available in-situ measurements to estimate parameters that describe soil hydro-physical and thermal characteristics;
• Multi-data source methodologies also in combination with modelling for assessing the soil physics dynamics at different temporal and spatial scales.

A number of physical (e.g. flow and transport), chemical (e.g. red-ox reactions) and biological (e.g. bio-mineralization) mechanisms are critical to the fate of geologic media where rocks, liquids, gases and microbes are in close interactions. The characterization and modeling of the complex interplay between these mechanisms is fundamental to our understanding of subsurface processes occurring in contaminant transport and remediation in groundwater and the vadose zone, in the geological storage of energy, CO2 and H2, as well as in enhanced oil and gas recovery. The increasing need to understand the evolution of such coupled processes in subsurface environments has motivated the development of novel experimental approaches, from laboratory to field, which are capable of quantifying the physical, chemical and biological properties of heterogeneous structures at different scales. Detailed experimental investigation and evidence of complex subsurface processes allow testing and validating new measuring techniques, and provide datasets with sufficient resolution to make the validation of coupled processes theories and numerical models possible.
The objective of this session is to discuss novel improvements in our understanding of coupled subsurface processes based on innovative methods allowing the quantification of relevant phenomena and their underlying mechanisms such as the dynamics of single and multiphase flows, conservative and reactive transport, chemically driven or biologically mediated processes, and bacterial dynamics and biofilm growth in heterogeneous porous and fractured media. Contributions may include, for example, experiments featuring high resolution measurements with novel sensors, analytical and imaging techniques, advanced in-situ single- and/or cross-borehole hydraulic tests, (hydro)geophysical techniques, strategies for borehole/borehole interval sealing, or inverse model techniques. We particularly encourage integrative multi-physic methods, i.e. hydraulic, chemical or heat methods aiming at elucidating the heterogeneity of flow, transport and related processes. Ideas for future strategies related to experimental methods, interpretation of existing data, and associated theoretical/numerical modeling, are particularly welcome.

Land degradation affects more than 52 billion hectares of land around the world. This is caused -to a large extent- by anthropogenic activities such as land abandonment, mining activities, deforestation, and inadequate land use and management. Disturbance or insufficient rebuilding of the soil physicochemical and biological characteristics can modify the ecosystem functions and services. In the absence of appropriate restoration, soils and ecosystems would remain in a disturbed state or continue to decline. Therefore, restoration and rehabilitation of degraded soils is critical to create healthy and functional ecosystems that support essential functions and services.
In this session, we welcome contributions covering experimental, observational, and theoretical studies this area of research. Topics of interest (although not limited to) are causes and impacts of land degradation and remedial actions and strategies for soil restoration and rehabilitation at local, regional or global scales.

Soil contamination is one of the main concerns of modern society. Anthropic activities and soil management are the main causes of soil contamination, from inadequate agriculture, forestry and urban practices to unsuitable waste management and mining activities. Soil health and quality are affected due to increased concentrations of potentially hazardous substances such as metals/metalloids, radionuclides, and organic compounds. Therefore, biogeochemical and edaphic processes are disturbed, as well as water quality and, ultimately, the food chain. Along with the spatial and temporal variability of soil contamination, other soil degradation factors are usually identified in contaminated areas which increase the complexity of the evaluation and implementation of rehabilitation programmes.
Several materials and rehabilitation techniques have been studied, mainly at a laboratory/greenhouse scale, but their success may be limited in the field. Also, carbon-based wastes such as biomass residues and biosolids can emit substantial amounts of greenhouse gases if landfilled or burned off.
Evaluation of contaminated areas, the optimization and set up of new technologies as well as the application of rehabilitation strategies based on circular-economy are required. To do so, it is vital to understand the factors governing the interactions between potentially hazardous substances (PHS) and soil components, organisms and/or water, as well as the system’s behaviour in different edaphoclimatic conditions. A multidisciplinary approach and the linking of studies are, therefore, needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and EU’s Green Deal.
This session aims to gather research studies presenting the most relevant advances in: Soil health and mitigation of contaminating processes; Evaluation and mapping of contaminated areas, and their risk, by classical techniques, as well as digital tools and remote sensing; Environmental rehabilitation techniques and materials (e.g. C based on wastes) with special relevance to those based on sustainable and natural processes; Evaluation of cost-effectiveness of organic and inorganic wastes and other matrices aon rehabilitation soil processes and their environmental applications; Modelling the behaviour of PHS and nutrients in contaminated and rehabilitated soils; Interactions between PHS, nutrients and soil components; Monitoring and environmental response of ecosystems after rehabilitation programmes implementation.

There is a steadily growing scientific and public concern regarding macro-, micro- and nanoplastic accumulation in arable soils. This is mirrored in a substantial increase of scientific publications over the past 3 to 4 years. However, the soil plastic research is still in its infancy, with more questions unanswered than answered. Overall, still little is known about plastic accumulation, degradation, losses, and the potential effects of plastic particles of different size on soil fertility, soil health and generally soil properties. This is partly associated with substantial difficulties to identify and quantify, especially micro- and nanoplastic mixed into the soil matrix.
The intention of this session is to bring together scientists working on different aspects of plastic contamination of soils. Highly welcome are studies dealing with analytical techniques, input and output pathways, degradation of plastic in soils, eco-toxicology effects, and potential mitigation approaches.

The contamination of agricultural, urban and forest soils by mining activity has a direct impact on food security, human health and the environment. According to the European Commission, there are about 2.8 M soil contamination episodes that represent a source of exposure to potentially toxic elements (PTE) for humans, especially in urban areas. It is therefore necessary to assess the risk of contamination associated with extractive activities and to promote prevention, protection and clean-up measures to ensure the safety of our environment. To address soil contamination and develop strategies to prevent and mitigate its ecotoxicological and human health risk, it is necessary to invest in (i) the identification and characterization of these sites, from the identification of the contaminant to the characterization of the ecosystem, and (ii) the identification of possible solutions.

One of the most important factors in mining activity is water, which is affected in different ways depending on the exploitation phase considered. In the abandonment phase in some specific mines, acid mine drainage (AMD) is generated related to the oxidation process of sulfides, such as pyrite, a ubiquitous mineral in metallic mines, in which bacterial metabolisms may be involved.

The regulatory framework for the assessment of risks linked to potentially toxic elements includes a scheme applied to the source (natural or anthropogenic) and the receptors (population, flora and fauna). This requires a multidisciplinary approach - including soil science, phytotoxic testing, health risk assessment and epidemiological assessment - and aims to fill a knowledge gap in studies linking urban soils and adverse health outcomes in a mining area. With this in mind, we invite researchers to present their most recent and ongoing findings, and hope to establish new partnerships to create holistic strategies that can help assess, prevent, and mitigate soil contamination in urban settings in a consistent and rapid manner.

Another important aspect is monitoring programs that provide data for risk assessments, which should be tailored to remediation or remediation actions when there is evidence of unacceptable risk to human health or ecosystems.

Soils play an essential role in supplying numerous ecosystem services such as food regulation, nutrient regulation, erosion regulation, water purification, carbon sequestration, food and fibre provisioning. Therefore, they play an essential role in human wellbeing. The unsustainable use of soil is one of the significant causes of land degradation due to soil erosion, sealing, pollution, salinization and wildfires—this trigger two of the most critical challenges of our time, biodiversity loss and climate change. A global effort is needed to tackle this unprecedented degradation trend caused by human actions, to maintain healthy soil functions and the services provided, especially in a growing consumption and population that are exhausting the ecosystem resources and contributing to climate change. It is paramount to develop creative solutions to make soil management more sustainable and maintain soil health.
In this session, we welcome contributions covering inter and transdisciplinary research through observational, theoretical and applied studies on soil ecosystem services and soil function in the context of a changing global environment. Topics of interest are (although not limited to): 1) Impacts of soil degradation on soil function and ecosystem services such as Climate neutrality and 2) Soil conservation and restoration actions for maintaining ecosystem services (including research, management, education and policy), 3) soil carbon sequestration related to land management practices and 4) integration of digital tools to support soil ecosystem services provisioning.

"This session is supported by the European Commission Horizon Europe project InBestSoil [Grant Agreement 101091099], and by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education Research, and Innovation (SERI) under contract number 22.00466".

Soil functions contribute to provide (soil-based) ecosystem services (ES), here defined as the benefits human obtain from the ecosystem. Although most of these functions are related to the soil biological activity, the current status and trends in soil biodiversity across Europe are poorly known, and adequate taxonomical and functional indicators are needed to evaluate the vulnerability of soils and its ES to climate change. Thus, in order to assess the health status of soils, i.e. its capacity of continuous provision of ecosystem services, there is the need to define robust indicators for assessment and monitoring, in joint programming with participating Member States’ national policy and programmes for soil quality monitoring, with taking into account not only biological processes but embracing all the bio-chemical-physical processes occurring in soils. As soil-based ecosystem services co-occur in space and overlap interacting at different spatial and temporal scales, their spatial distribution, as well as their spatial synergies and trade-offs must also be known.
The aim of this session is then collecting contributions on functional indicators, their modelling and mapping, as well as methodological approaches and applications at different spatial scales aimed to the characterization of bundles of soil ES and soil threats. The definition and evaluation of indicators including specific references to soil biodiversity and target values for healthy soils are particularly welcome.

The present context of accelerated changes in both climate and land use imposes an unprecedent pressure on a number of vulnerable ecosystems including wetlands, forests and rangelands, in which vegetation closely interacts and coevolves with soils and landforms. Complex interactions between climate, soils and biotic factors are involved in the development of landform-soil-vegetation feedbacks and play an important role in making ecosystems resilient to disturbances. In addition, large shifts in the distribution of vegetation and soils are associated with losses of ecosystem services (including carbon capture), frequently involving thresholds of ecosystem stability and nonlinear responses to both human and climatic pressures.

This session looks back on the successful and exciting sessions on landform-soil-vegetation coevolution and ecosystem stability annually held at EGU since 2013 and will focus on ecogeomorphological and ecohydrological aspects of landscapes and wathersheds (including their connectivity), the conservation of both soil and water resources, and the restoration of ecosystem services and functions.

We welcome theoretical, modelling and empirical studies as well as scaling approaches from the soil profile to the landscape scale addressing soil structure and its functions, including carbon and nutrient cycling, the distribution of vegetation and their coevolving landforms, and also contributions with a wide appreciation of the soil erosion-vegetation relationships that rule the formation of broad, landscape-level spatial organization. We also welcome studies describing the implications of these spatial patterns for the resilience, stability and restoration of ecosystems under the pressure of climate change and/or human disturbances.

We are proud to announce that Prof. Susana Bautista (Head of the Ramon Margalef Multidisciplinary Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Alicante, Spain) has agreed to participate in the session with the invited talk "Within-patch plant diversity modulates the hydrological source-sink dynamics of dryland landscapes".

Vegetation is a structured and complex layer that importantly affects Earth’s surface processes. Hydrologically, the canopy intercepts precipitation (eventually evaporating) and redistributes it into throughfall and stemflow. Along those pathways, matter deposited on or produced in the canopy is transported to the forest floor. Canopies also interact with radiation and atmospheric conditions, impacting transpiration and root water uptake. Such, vegetation and canopies affect balances of water, matter and energy as well as their spatio-temporal distribution and generate feedbacks in ecosystems, water bodies and atmosphere. Moreover, plants absorb the energy of falling raindrops, reduce wind speed and contribute to soil stabilization through their root system. In this way, vegetation impacts the occurrence of erosion events. Plant traits, depending on their characteristics, can be erosion-reducing or erosion-promoting. Also, significant differences in erosion can be observed between and within different plant communities and developmental stages of the plant cover. Various mechanisms behind these complex processes are still not understood in detail and require the interdisciplinary expertise of soil scientists, geomorphologists, ecologists and botanists, as well as (eco-)hydrologists. This session broadly invites contributions from various disciplines to illustrate recent progress in research on vegetation and canopy impacts on soil erosion, soils, biogeochemical and hydrological processes of all (eco)systems by experimental work or modeling.

Climate change is affecting the dynamic feedbacks between plant, soil, and microbial communities and thus strongly influences terrestrial biogeochemical cycling. In this session we address the question: What is the impact of changing environmental conditions on the plant-soil system, and what are the resulting effects on soil biogeochemistry? Given the positive and negative feedbacks with the climate system, dynamics of soil organic matter across terrestrial ecosystems are a key focus of this session.
We invite contributions from manipulative field experiments, observations in natural-climate gradients, and modelling studies that explore the climate change impacts on plant-soil interactions, biogeochemical cycling of C, N, P, microbial diversity and decomposition processes, and deep-soil biogeochemistry. Submissions that adopt novel approaches, e.g. molecular, isotopic, or synthesize outputs from large-scale, field experiments focusing on plant-soil-microbe feedbacks to warming, wetting, drying and thawing are very welcome.

Agrogeophysics harnesses geophysical methods such as ground-penetrating radar, electrical imaging, seismic,... from hand-held over drone to satellite-borne, to characterize patterns or processes in the soil-plant continuum of interest for agronomic management. These methods help develop sustainable agricultural practices by providing minimally-invasive, spatially consistent, multi-scale, and temporally-resolved information of processes in agro- ecosystems that is inaccessible by traditional monitoring techniques. The aim of this session is to feature applications of geophysical methods in agricultural research and/or show methodologies to overcome their inherent limitations and challenges. We welcome contributions monitoring soil or plant properties and states revealing information relevant for agricultural management; studies developing and using proximal or remote sensing techniques for mapping or monitoring soil-water-plant interactions; work focused on bridging the scale gap between these multiple techniques; or work investigating pedophysical relationships to better understand laboratory-scale links between sensed properties and soil properties and states of interest. Submissions profiting on data fusion, utilizing innovative modeling tools for interpretation, and demonstrating novel acquisition or processing techniques are encouraged.

The interactions between plants and the environment play a prominent role in terrestrial fluxes and biochemical cycles. However, we still lack detailed knowledge of how these interactions impact plant growth and plant access to soil resources, particularly under deficient conditions. The main challenge arises from the complexity inherent to both soil and plants. To address these knowledge gaps, an improved understanding of plant-related transfer processes is needed.
Experimental techniques such as non-invasive imaging and three-dimensional root system modeling tools have deepened our insights into the functioning of water and solute transport processes in the soil-plant system. Quantitative approaches that integrate across disciplines and scales constitute stepping-stones to foster our understanding of fundamental biophysical processes at the interface between soil and plants.
This session targets research investigating plant-related resource transfer processes across different scales (from the rhizosphere to the global scale) and welcomes scientists from multiple disciplines ranging from soil to plant sciences. We are specifically inviting contributions on the following topics:
- Measuring and modeling of water and solute fluxes across soil-plant-atmosphere continuum at different scales.
- Novel experimental and modeling techniques assessing below-ground plant processes such as root growth, root water, and nutrient uptake, root exudation, microbial interactions, and soil aggregation
- Measuring and modeling of soil-plant hydraulics
- Bridging the gap between biologically and physically oriented research in soil and plant sciences
- Identification of plant strategies to better access and use resources from soil under abiotic stress
- Mechanistic understanding of drought impact on transpiration and photosynthesis and their predictions by earth system models

Soil is the largest carbon (C) reservoir in terrestrial ecosystems and soil organic carbon (SOC) is the basis for soil’s biodiversity, health and fertility. Furthermore, enhancing SOC storage in agricultural soils is key for food security, provision of the soil-related ecosystem services, and climate change mitigation.

Investing in productive, highly resilient agriculture, based on appropriate land and soil management requires the knowledge base on drivers and processes controlling soil C storage and its dynamics in agroecosystems. Thus, this session will provide a forum to exchange knowledge about the key mechanisms and proxies controlling dynamics of soil C (both organic and inorganic) in cropping systems and natural/semi-natural areas.
Studies, opinions and other contributions in this session will aim to a wide range of topics related to SOC and soil organic carbon (SIC) and soil traits depending on SOC and SIC. These topics may also include soil fertility, provision of ecosystem services, and their changes.

Types of contribution appreciated include, but are not limited to, definitive and intermediate results; project outcomes; proposal of methods or sampling and modelling strategies, and the assessment of their effectiveness; projection of previous results at the light of climate change and climatic extremes; literature surveys, reviews, meta-analysis; and opinions. These works will be evaluated at the light of the organization of a special issue in an impacted journal

Soil Health is the capacity of a soil to function within ecosystem and land-use boundaries to sustain biological productivity, maintain environmental quality, and promote plant, animal, and consequently human health. Global change factors (warming, extreme events, elevated CO2, droughts, floods, etc.) as well as human activities (land use change, intensive fertilization, pesticide application, mismanagement of landfills, nuclear accidents, etc.) negatively affect this soil health. The initial modification of physical and chemical soil properties may have dramatic effects on soil biota – the main driver of all biogeochemical cycles of carbon and nutrients. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) defines “Organic agriculture as a production system that sustains the health of soils, ecosystems and people. It relies on ecological processes, biodiversity and cycles adapted to local conditions, rather than the use of inputs with adverse effects"

We invite field, laboratory and modelling studies on the soil health parameters, such as SOC content, basal microbial respiration, enzyme activities, and others, which are affected by global change and human activities. This session considers the contributions on organic farming in relation to soil changes, soil productivity, plant protection, healthy food, food quality or socio-economic aspects. Studies focused on optimal energy efficiency, carbon and water footprint, greenhouse gasses (GHG) and soil nutrient balancing as indicators of sustainable agricultural practices, are also welcomed. Research conducted on different continents will be shown in order to know the sustainability of organic agriculture and soil health under different environmental, social and economic conditions. Abstracts covering studies from micro to a global scale are highly appreciated. All these studies could provide a robust scientific basis for governmental agricultural policies development and decision tools for stakeholders.

A grand challenge facing society in the coming decades is to feed the growing human population in a sustainable and healthy manner. This challenge is central to many of the United Nations Sustainable Development goals (SDGs), including the zero hunger goal but also those for human health, water, terrestrial biodiversity and sustainable production and consumption.
This problem is made more complex by an increasingly globalised food system and its interactions with a changing climate. Agri-food system actors - including policy makers, corporations, farmers, and consumers - must meet this challenge while considering potentially conflicting priorities, such as environmental sustainability (e.g., minimising disturbance to ecosystems via greenhouse gas emissions and the use of water, land, fertilisers and other inputs), economic viability (e.g., revenues for food producers and guaranteed access for consumers), nutritional balance and quality (e.g., addressing overconsumption and undernourishment), and resilience to climate change.
This growing complexity of agri-food systems, which can involve global supply chains and difficult environmental and societal tradeoffs, needs to be better understood.
The type of product (e.g. plant or meat based, fresh or processed), as well as the location and method of production, can play an important role in improving the nutritional quality and environmental sustainability of global food production, to enable healthy and sustainable diets. Quantifying and assessing these multiple outcomes while accounting for the linkages, interconnections, and scales of local and global supply chains will be essential for informing decisions aimed at developing sustainable and resilient agri-food systems.
This session welcomes submissions that quantify and assess a range of outcomes from agri-food systems across multiple spatial and temporal scales, and the trade-offs or synergies between them. The session will include studies providing improved methods for quantifying multiple environmental, economic or social dimensions, studies that incorporate the role of food trade into solution-development, and studies that seek to achieve multiple sustainability goals together.

Anthropogenic soil compaction is one of the main soil degradation processes in agriculture and forestry worldwide. Steadily increasing masses of machinery and their intensive use in agriculture and forestry increase the risk of harmful soil compaction, especially under unfavourable soil conditions.
Once a soil is compacted, reduced water infiltration, impaired plant and root growth and lower biological activity occur, whereas surface runoff, soil erosion and nutrient leaching increase. Among others, this influences the yield potential and yield security as well as the resilience to extreme weather events due to climate change.

Despite its importance, soil compaction receives relatively low awareness compared to other soil degradation processes such as soil erosion, which might be attributed to a reduced visibility of soil compaction. Deep ruts of the tyres may be recognisable at the soil surface, but surface smoothening by tillage and seedbed preparation will remove them. The effects of soil compaction in deeper soil layers are mostly invisible at all.

Within this session, we will focus on all aspects of soil compaction in agriculture and forests. This includes all methodological aspect (field work, laboratory analysis, sensor development, statistical analysis, and modelling), all spatial scales (from pedon to regional to continental scale) and all temporal scales (past, present, and future). Furthermore, applications and solutions for reducing soil compaction in agriculture and forestry are very welcome.

All researchers involved in soil compaction are warmly invited to attend this session.

Viticulture is one of the most important agricultural sectors of Europe with an average annual production of 168 million hectoliters (54% of global consumption). The concept of “Terroir” links the quality and typicity of wine to the territory and, in particular, to specific environmental characteristics that affect the plant response (e.g. climate, geology, pedology).
The environmental factors that drive the expression of terroir vary in space and time, as well as soil and crop management.
Understanding the spatial variability of some environmental factors (e.g. soil) is very important to manage and preserve terroirs and face the current and future issues of climate change. In this sense, it is important to stress that in the last decade, the study of terroir has moved from a largely descriptive analysis of geographical variability in land characteristics to a finer elucidation of the relationships between the plant and the environment, which are influenced by agricultural practices, thus opening the door to site-specific management.
This includes more applied technical research fields, including: sensors for mapping and monitoring environmental variables, remote sensing and drones for crop monitoring, forecast models, use of microelements and isotopes for wine traceability, and metagenome approach to study the biogeochemical cycles of nutrients.
Moreover, public awareness for ecosystem functioning has led to more quantitative approaches in evidencing the relations between management and the ecosystem services of vineyard agroecosystems. Agroecology approaches in vineyard, like the use of cover crops, straw mulching, and organic amendments, are developing to improve biodiversity, organic matter, soil water and nutrient retention, and preservation from soil erosion.
On those bases, the session will address several aspects of viticultural terroirs:
1) quantifying and spatial modelling of terroir components that influence plant growth, fruit composition and quality, mostly examining climate-soil-water relationships; 2) terroir concept resilience to climate change; 3) wine traceability and zoning based on microelements and isotopes; 4) interaction between vineyard management practices and effects on soil and water quality as well as biodiversity and related ecosystem services.

This session offers an opportunity to present studies or professional works regarding irrigated agriculture, either with disciplinary or multidisciplinary approaches, to provide solutions for the society's challenges in the XXI century, in the following areas:
• The resilience of irrigated areas at different spatial scales, mainly when water and soil are limiting factors.
• Estimation of crop transpiration/crop water requirement, even considering the possibility to apply controlled water deficit conditions.
• Coupling natural and human systems where ground and surface water and land are limiting resources for irrigation
• Safety in marginal water use in irrigated agriculture
• Traditional, novel, and transitional technologies for irrigation management, control and practical application at different spatial scales.
• Reducing the cost of technology monitoring soil and plant water status, improving the quality of data acquired from the sensors, as well as integrating the acquired data into an easy-to-use Decision Support System.
• Potential of available remotely and proximal sensed data, mainly referring to those platforms and instruments acquiring frequently high-resolution data, to tackle current and future irrigation problems at different spatial scales.
• Improving the integration of climate change scenarios and weather forecasts into agro-hydrological models and decision support systems to improve decisions in irrigation management and safe surface water-groundwater interactions.

Posters and oral communications are available. Likewise, a Special Issue is foreseen.

Wildfires are a worldwide phenomenon with many environmental, social, and economic implications, which are expected to escalate as a consequence of climate change and land abandonment, management, and planning, further promoting land degradation and decreasing ecosystem services supply.
The current situation demands from the scientific community the study of wildfire effects on the ecosystems and the development of integrated tools for pre- and post-fire land management practices that reduce the vulnerability to wildfires and their impacts. However, this research urges the attention not only from researchers, but also from stakeholders and policy-makers all over the world, since basic resources such as raw materials, water, and soils as well as habitats are at stake.
This session aims at gathering researchers on the effects of wildfires on ecosystems, from wildfire prevention to post-fire mitigation. We kindly invite laboratory, field, and/or modelling studies involving the following topics:
i. prescribed and/or experimental fires;
ii. fire severity and burn severity;
iii. fire effects on vegetation, soil and water;
iv. post-fire hydrological and erosive response;
v. post-fire management and mitigation;
vi. socio-economic studies on pre- and post-fire land management;
vii. fire risk assessment and modelling.

China and Europe faces the joint challenge of increasing yield and the quality of produced food balancing this with the need to enhance the provision of ecosystems services from agricultural areas and improving rural livelihoods. Improving the use of soil and water resources is at the core of this transversal challenge, encompassing all kind of agricultural systems. To face this challenge a significant effort in research and dissemination is taking place in the last decades in Europe and China, which has fostered also joint research activities between teams and institutions of both continents.
This session will try to promote discussion and networking among researchers working or interested in this issue from different background, focusing on recent and past advances coming from cooperative research between European and Chinese teams, particularly on:
i) Comparison of strategies to optimize soil and water use in different agricultural systems under different environmental conditions and scales.
ii) Interaction between basic and applied science to deliver viable technological packages for addressing these challenges for stakeholders.
iii) Synergies between digital agriculture and basic and applied research for more sustainable agricultural systems.
iv) Success stories of implementing soil and water conservation programs elaborated by government agencies like the Green for Grain (GFG) programme and Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
This session encompasses activities related to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 15.3 on Land Degradation Neutrality.

Measures for increasing soil organic carbon in agricultural soils are becoming increasingly popular as part of the global efforts to mitigate climate change. A large range of management strategies (e.g. minimizing soil disturbance, diversification of crop rotations, use of cover crops, incorporation of crop residues, addition of organic amendments, rewetting organic soils) are investigated in a range of socio-ecological contexts to evaluate their role of sequestering carbon in the soil.
Increasing organic carbon content in soils has several co-benefits, beyond climate change mitigation, including improvement of soil health, fertility and water holding capacity. On the other hand, agricultural strategies aimed at increasing carbon sequestration may affect other element cycles, with implications for greenhouse gas fluxes (N2O and CH4) fluxes, and losses of C, N and P to ground- and surface waters. Thus, the overall effect of these management practices needs to be evaluated to appropriately quantify their environmental impact.
In this session, we welcome contributions that give insights into the effects of agricultural management practices, aimed at improving carbon sequestration, on the greenhouse gas balance and on element losses to ground and surface waters. We welcome experimental, modelling or synthesis approaches, but a special focus will be given to studies trying to understand the causes and mechanisms of the observed trade-offs and/or synergies.

Phosphorus (P) is an essential element for life on Earth and is tightly cycled within the biosphere. Throughout geological history, P availability has regulated biological productivity with impacts on the global carbon cycle. Today, human activities are significantly changing the natural cycling of P. Phosphate mining has depleted geological P reserves, while increased inputs of P to terrestrial ecosystems have enhanced fluxes of P to lakes and the oceans.

Direct anthropogenic perturbations of the P cycle, coupled with other human-induced stresses, have impacted numerous environments. Forest ecosystems may be losing their ability to recycle P efficiently, due to excessive N input, extensive biomass removal, and climatic stress. Soils, which serve as the biogeochemical fulcrum of the terrestrial P cycle, have been greatly altered by fertilizer use in recent decades. Changes in the P cycle on land impact on the magnitude and timing of P fluxes into aquatic ecosystems, influencing their trophic state. Burial in sediments returns P to the geological sink, eventually forming economically viable P deposits. Throughout the P cycle, redox conditions play a key role in transformations and mobility of P.

This interdisciplinary session invites contributions to the study of P from across the geosciences, and aims to foster links between researchers working on different aspects of the P cycle. We target a balanced session giving equal weight across the continuum of environments in the P cycle, from forests, soils and groundwater, through lakes, rivers and estuaries, to oceans, marine sediments and geological P deposits. We welcome studies of both past and present P cycling, with a focus on novel techniques and approaches.

Soil resources are globally threatened and require our proactive response to ensure sustainable land management and the provision of future ecosystem services. The complexity, variability, and opaque nature of soil limits our capabilities to predict soil functionality and challenge the development of adequate soil management and land use strategies.
Modelling approaches seek to unravel the complexity of soil functioning and processes that shape below-ground activities and feedbacks. A pivotal aspect of soil modelling is the identification of complex interactions between biotic and abiotic soil components underlying the emergence of soil functioning and soil structure, which cannot be foreseen a priori. Soil models also deepen our understanding of soil physical and biogeochemical processes by integrating sparse data that can only be collected at limited spatial and temporal scales.
From this vantage point, several open questions for the integration of soil functions and processes into models still remain. As a matter of examples, some key questions can be verbalized as: What are the relevant metrics representing key soil functions and defining soil quality? What biological processes do we need to consider for modelling soil functions? Or how much details are needed to adequately describe the system, while keeping models simple enough for understanding their dynamics?
This session brings together recent advances in soil modelling across different scales, examples ranging from models of microbiome interactions in soil pores to the modelling of agricultural systems and land use types under a changing climate. Contributions address open challenges and questions pertaining to the investigation of biogeochemical/physical processes by using data-driven, theoretical, and mechanistic modelling approaches. Novel strategies to interlink different temporal and spatial scales are also highlighted.

Spatial soil information is fundamental for environmental modelling and land use management. Spatial representation (maps) of separate soil attributes (both laterally and vertically) and of soil-landscape processes are needed at a scale appropriate for environmental management. The challenge is to develop explicit, quantitative, and spatially realistic models of the soil-landscape continuum. These can be used as input in environmental models, such as hydrological, climate or vegetation productivity (crop models) addressing the uncertainty in the soil layers and its impact in the environmental modelling. Modern advances in soil sensing, geospatial technologies, and spatial statistics are enabling exciting opportunities to efficiently create soil maps that are more consistent, detailed, and accurate than previous maps while providing information about the related uncertainty. The production of high-quality soil maps is a key issue because it enables stakeholders (e.g. farmers, planners, other scientists) to understand the variation of soils at the landscape, field, and sub-field scales. The products of digital soil mapping should be integrated within other environmental models for assessing and mapping soil functions to support sustainable management. Examples of implementation and use of digital soil maps in different disciplines such as agricultural (e.g. crops, food production) and environmental (e.g. element cycles, water, climate) modelling are welcomed. All presentations related to the tools of digital soil mapping, the philosophy and strategies of digital soil mapping at different scales and for different purposes are also welcome.

Soil erosion and water scarcity are main threats to the environmental and economic sustainability in agriculture. Both natural and man-made disturbances, affecting the water and sedimentary flows, represent key topics and essential data contributors in the scenarios of crop yield in agricultural watersheds. Under the current climate change, it is essential to find mitigation solutions. Remote sensing (RS) techniques open up new horizons for monitoring and understanding physical processes at different scales and times, also thanks to open-source big data. Multi-temporal (4D) surveys allow to detect critical changes, infer threshold values, and analyse phenomena at appropriately temporal scales. 4D RS data is useful from monitoring geomorphic changes and vegetation growth, to the quantification of soil erosion and land degradation, to the assessment of unsuitable maintenance practices or unsustainable water use. Data collected can be exploited as benchmarks and inputs for spatial-distributed models. The synergistic use of up-to-date RS information with geospatial models and statistics can support interventions and develop management strategies in agricultural areas.
This session provides an overview of the last advances on this problem and is dedicated to multidisciplinary contributions on:
• The use and the highly recommended fusion of different RS technologies (e.g., LiDAR, photogrammetry, GNSS, multispectral images) and platforms (e.g., UAV, satellite, airborne, ground-based) to realize 4D surveys with multiscale approaches, evaluating their respective pros and cons and focusing also on future opportunities for aforementioned threats monitoring;
• Examples of implementation of the RS techniques supporting different disciplines such as agricultural (e.g., crops dynamics, precision agriculture, and food production and security) and environmental (e.g., soil and water dynamics, climate changes) modelling are welcomed;
• New perspective on spatially distributed modelling which takes advantage of the new RS surveys derived from multisource data integration (e.g., multispectral, hyperspectral, and thermal) and smart data analysis (e.g., pre-processing, deep machine learning).
We would like to gather studies focusing on soil erosion dynamics and water stress conditions on crops, especially facing new challenges in measuring, mapping, and defining protocols and procedures through the support of the 4D RS techniques.

In complex earth systems, uncertain information (whether in measurements, maps or models) is the norm, and this impinges on most knowledge that earth scientists generate. It is important to quantify and account for this uncertainty, otherwise results can be misleading. This is particularly important when predictions are used in a decision-making process where the end user needs to be able to properly evaluate the risks involved.

Quantifying uncertainty is a difficult challenge, that continually calls for the development of more refined tools. Many diverse methods have been developed, such as for spatial prediction using kriging and machine learning, stochastic simulation, uncertainty propagation and in expert elicitation, but many challenges still remain. A second and often overlooked challenge with uncertainty is how to communicate and visualize it effectively to end users such as scientists, engineers, policy makers, regulators and the general public.

In this session, we will examine the state of the art of both uncertainty quantification and communication in earth and environmental sciences. We welcome submissions on three components of the problem: 1) new methods and applications of uncertainty quantification; 2) use of uncertainty information in decision-making and for risk assessment; and 3) efficient and effective communication and visualization of uncertainty to end-users. Dealing with uncertainty across all these three components is a truly multidisciplinary task, requiring input from diverse disciplines (such as earth and environmental science, statistics, economics and psychology) to ensure that it is successful. The main aim of this session is to bring these disciplines together so that we can learn from each other. Previous topics discussed in this session include (but are not limited to) quantifying uncertainty in carbon budgets for climate change research, advising farmers on fertilizer application and liming given uncertainties in soil nutrients and weather forecasts, statistical modelling of laboratory measurement errors, and communication of uncertainty in micronutrient concentrations in staple crops to decision makers.

A well-designed experiment is a crucial methodology in Soil Science, Geomorphology and Hydrology.
Depending on the specific research topic, a great variety of temporal and spatial scales is addressed.
From raindrop impact and single particle detachment to the shaping of landscapes: experiments are designed and conducted to illustrate problems, clarify research questions, develop and test hypotheses, generate data and deepen process understanding.
Every step involved in design, construction, conduction, processing and interpretation of experiments and experimental data might be a challenge on itself, and discussions within the community can be a substantial and fruitful component for both, researchers and teachers.
This PICO session offers a forum for experimentalists, teachers, students and enthusiasts.
We invite you to present your work, your questions, your results and your method, to meet, to discuss, to exchange ideas and to consider old and new approaches.
Join the experimentalists!

Both check dams and agricultural terraces are effective measures and they have long histories of use in retaining soil and developing agriculture around the world. Agricultural terraces, resilient systems on the slope, are associated with both environmental and social benefits, including the control of soil erosion and high rural population densities. However, the history of these systems is poorly known, including their original and, therefore, potential land uses. On the other hand, check dams have been used worldwide in the gullies since the first century to control flows of water and sediment on the catchment scale. Research experiences have demonstrated their effectiveness in many environments, but the literature also documents examples of poor structure functioning or even failure, due to inadequate design criteria, improper construction methods, and undesired secondary effects. This session provides an avenue for soil scientists, hydrologists, and policy makers to discuss pressing issues on the construction and management of check dams and agricultural terraces. Topics to be discussed here include: (1) Past and recent land-us, environmental benefits, soil erosion, and even policy arenas. (2) Roles of check dams and agricultural terraces on the ecological and hydrogeological security, and food supply. (3) Theories and criteria for the construction of check dams and agricultural terraces. (4) Experiences and methods for the management of check dams and agricultural terraces. (5) Comparison and emulation of check dams among different regions. (6) Other topics related to check dams and agricultural terraces.

Soils provide many ecosystem services, which makes it a crucial component to consider for a sustainable future and to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). During this session, scientific and transdisciplinary insights to support soil policies are presented, with a focus on soil health, carbon farming and the importance of soil data.

Presentations will show results that contribute to future soil health policies, or help to identify gaps in current policies. Attention will be given to the role of transdisciplinary research: how can the involvement of various stakeholders result in feasible and widely applicable principles to trigger positive improvement in soil management, and to increase soil literacy and engagement of the non-scientific community.

Organic carbon sequestration as an important soil ecosystem service, has gained prominence as a mitigation option to reach targets set in the Paris Agreement and the European Green Deal. Presentations in this session will discuss challenges and opportunities for designing robust Carbon Farming schemes that prevent greenhouse gas emissions from agri-food system, while at the same time being socially acceptable and economically viable. Particular attention will be given to the opportunities to develop result-based carbon farming schemes where payment levels reflect the actual impact of the management practices on carbon stocks (relative to a benchmark).

For policy design and monitoring, the generation of user-oriented high quality new and legacy data is crucial. The contributions to this session will address the potential of soil data, the efforts and challenges associated with soil data harmonisation across time and space, and how data can be used for decision support systems.