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Key Messages
The HoliSoils Key Messages offer a clear snapshot of what the project is learning about forest soils: how they sustain ecosystems, help tackle climate change, respond to different management choices and why better monitoring matters. Developed by HoliSoils experts, they make complex science accessible for a wide audience.
Key message #1 –
Forest soil health impacts ecosystem services
Forest soils provide multiple ecosystem services. For this, forest soils rely on complex interactions, interdependencies and feedbacks between many components and processes of soil biology, soil physics and soil chemistry – creating a unique balance that varies according to forest type.
Key message #2 –
Forest soils contribute to reaching environmental goals
Forest soils are vital for climate mitigation and biodiversity. They host diverse organisms and store large amounts of carbon, often more than vegetation. While plants capture carbon quickly and release it through growth and decay, soils accumulate and stabilise it over long periods, making both essential and complementary carbon reservoirs.
Key message #3 –
Forest management impacts soil health
Forest management practices affect soil health, carbon storage, and greenhouse gas emissions differently across diverse forest ecosystems.
Climate-Smart Forestry practices and other alternative practices, such as prescribed burning, can have beneficial impacts when compared to conventional forestry for soil function, resilience, and sustained productivity, as well as for carbon sequestration and emissions reduction. Forest management can be optimised according to these considerations.
Key message #4 –
Advanced forest soil monitoring is needed
Critically, 60-70% of EU soils are degraded. This affects soil’s ability to contribute to climate change mitigation, but also soil’s importance for provisioning of ecosystem services and biodiversity.
Soil degradation costs the EU tens of billions annually, and healthy soils are vital for achieving SDGs and the EU Green Deal goals. In order to inform realistic policy and strategic action, reliable data and information is indispensable –particularly about forest soils.
