Soil-water land-use systems of the sandy soil landscapes: a quantitative study

The sandy soils are nutrient-constrained and frequently experience excess water during winters and scarcity during summers, creating a compromised water situation in the Netherlands. The summer droughts of 2018, 2019 and 2020 were a wake-up call that our landscapes are not sustainable and resilient to climate change, especially sandy soil landscapes. Scientists have also shown that such erratic rainfall patterns make these areas prone to flooding (during winter) and drought (in summer). The low water-holding capacity of sandy soils makes water management practices more cumbersome and complex. To extend the human use of these landscapes, a focus on nature-based solutions that utilize the natural potential of the landscapes is necessary. Therefore, a study will be conducted in the sandy soil regions of the Netherlands to unravel how landscapes function based on soil suitability and water availability, along with the impact of land use. To better understand natural systems, past soil-water-land use systems will be reconstructed and compared with the current system in living labs. The reduced-complexity hydrological and groundwater models will be used to study and quantify the relationship between soil and water on different land uses. This knowledge will be used to evaluate existing or proposed landscape regeneration approaches under various climate scenarios. Thus, the result will be used to recommend sustainable land use practices based on soil type and water systems for making the sandy soil landscapes of the Netherlands future climate-proof.