Impact of Soil Sealing on Soil Carbon Sequestration, Water Storage Potentials and Biomass Productivity in Functional Urban Areas of the European Union and the United Kingdom

Gergely Tóth, Eva Ivits, Gundula Prokop, Mirko Gregor, Jaume Fons-Esteve, Roger Milego Agràs and Emanuele Mancosu
Additional contact information
Gergely Tóth: Institute of Advanced Studies, 9730 Kőszeg, Hungary
Eva Ivits: European Environment Agency, 1050 Copenhagen, Denmark
Gundula Prokop: Environment Agency Austria, 1090 Vienna, Austria
Mirko Gregor: space4environment, 6947 Niederanven, Luxemburg
Jaume Fons-Esteve: Departament de Geografia, Autonomous University of Barcelona, 08193 Barcelona, Spain
Roger Milego Agràs: Departament de Geografia, Autonomous University of Barcelona, 08193 Barcelona, Spain
Emanuele Mancosu: The European Topic Centre on Spatial Analysis and Synthesis (ETC-UMA), University of Malaga, 29016 Malaga, Spain

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 6, 1-15

Abstract: The negative impacts of soil sealing are numerous, from withdrawing fertile soil from biomass production to modifying the microclimate and decreasing biodiversity. Many of the processes are interrelated and propagate further undesirable consequences from local to global levels. Three issues are especially important from the viewpoint of multiscale ecological cycles and consequent environmental impacts. One is soil organic carbon (SOC), the other is soil water management and the third is biomass productivity. In this study, we assessed the lost carbon sequestration potential due to soil sealing in functional Urban Areas (FUAs) of Europe, the potential effect of soil sealing on the topsoil to hold water to its full capacity and the loss of biomass productivity potential. Findings revealed that one-fifth of the area of soil that became sealed between 2012 and 2018 was of high productivity potential, and almost two-thirds was of medium productivity potential. New soil sealing caused a loss of carbon sequestration potential estimated at 4 million tons of carbon of the FUAs and also caused an estimated potential loss of water-holding capacity of 668 million m 3 .

Keywords: land degradation neutrality; land degradation; soil organic carbon; urban expansion; land take (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/6/840/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/6/840/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:6:p:840-:d:831276

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().