Soil threats in the Netherlands

Considering the EU Soil Thematic Strategy and the proposal for a framework Directive the Dutch government wanted to know what this could mean for the Netherlands in terms of policy and measures or in terms of impact on for instance agriculture and environment. The proposal for the Framework Directive to protect soil mentions the following soil threats: soil sealing, erosion, organic matter decline, salinisation, compaction, landslides and contamination. Focusing on the soil threats for which risk areas (also called priority areas) should be identified we were asked to try and locate where such areas would possibly be located within the country. For some threats we adopted methods from the ENVASSO-project and for other threats we used traditional land evaluation methods. Our research resulted in maps showing potential risk areas in the Netherlands (Hack-ten Broeke et al., 2009). These maps do not indicate where risks are considered important enough to call for policy measures.