Evaluation and compensation system for soils in spatial planning - Bodenwertverfahren

As soil provides a large range of ecosystem services, it should be of high priority to protect them in the environment. Soil protection faces the challenge of urban sprawl and land take by roads and buildings. Thus, soil protection aims at avoiding or minimizing, or, where this is not possible, mitigating or compensating land take and soil sealing. Furthermore, it is crucial to consider the soil quality in current and future development to avoid the use of high-performance soils. Therefore, the functions and services of soil should be considered in spatial planning.

In order to develop an evaluation tool which allows an assessment of soil destruction as well as proposals for the mitigation and compensation measures the three main topics

i current status of and impact on soil functions,

ii intensity of the modification of the soil by construction and the

iii monetary evaluation of the required compensation

were combined to develop a tool called “Bodenwertverfahren”. While the costs of compensation have to be elaborated in a separate step, the excel-based evaluation tool combines the status of soil functions, evaluation of the intensity of the modification of the soil by construction and the required compensation. In addition, the impact of mitigation measures can be assessed.

The tool can be used for both the evaluation of impacts and the compensation of soil destruction by any infrastructure and may be applied in any planning process such as Strategic and Environmental impact assessment. In future it may provide a basis for inclusion of soil compensation in legal requirements or regulations for spatial planning.

Permanent land use can thus be compensated, e.g. by upgrading degraded soils or by unsealing and restoring soils and soil functions elsewhere. The compensation of soil sealing and soil destruction based on soil functions in cases of unavoidable soil sealing is a significant contribution to the long-term European Union goal to move closer to net-zero land use by 2050.