Soil-Value: Valuing and enhancing soil infrastructure to improve societal sustainability and resilience

土壤是全球社会和地球的生命支持系统。土壤直接提供了我们绝大多数的食物；它们是地球系统中最大的碳储存库；它们调节水质和水量，减少洪水、干旱和污染的风险。通过这种方式，土壤提供了一种自然形式的基础设施，这对支持农村和城市社区和经济至关重要。尽管这一基础设施至关重要，但我们不明白：-目前在粮食生产、水流和质量调节以及碳储存方面提供的服务--这些服务来自哪些土壤，它们对农村/城市社区有什么价值？-我们在土地排水、耕作、作物选择、牲畜饲养、植树、砍伐森林和城市发展方面做出的决定如何影响土壤提供多重服务的能力，或者这些决定可能如何相互作用。-我们的土壤基础设施对不断变化的气候和越来越大的压力有多大的适应能力，需要用更少的土地生产更多的粮食，我们的全球社会在努力到2050年养活90亿人口的过程中面临着越来越大的压力，以及正在进行的城市化。这种缺乏理解的原因是缺乏跨传统上独立的与土壤基础设施相关的科学领域的整合。土壤功能是水文、物理(土壤侵蚀和风化)、生物和化学过程的产物，因此需要将这些领域的知识结合起来。这项奖学金将把这些学科结合在一起，创建一个新的计算机模型，以提高我们对土壤基础设施、它们对社会的价值以及它们的弹性的理解。这一模式将被用来探索未来的情景将如何影响向我们的社会提供食物-水-碳服务。将进行不确定性和风险分析，为决策提供连贯有力的证据基础。这将使我们能够找到方法来改善我们的土壤，为我们的社会提供更多的好处，改善可持续性和福祉。该奖学金的目的是：a.评估土壤作为一种自然基础设施的价值，通过粮食生产、水调节和碳储存来保护和改善农村和城市地区。评估土壤基础设施对气候变化和不断变化的土地利用压力的复原力，探索管理土壤基础设施以减轻风险并提高其价值和复原力的潜力。改变社区和企业中土壤基础设施的感知价值，提高跨部门的决策能力，以帮助创建可持续的弹性社会。该奖学金的成果将包括：-对土壤功能、可持续性和弹性的科学见解。-对土壤作为基础设施的第一次评估，它的增强能力，以及它对气候变化和不断增加的土地利用压力的脆弱性。-对围绕这些评估的不确定性的估计，以及这对提供食品、水和碳服务的风险的影响。-定量预测模型框架，可以支持跨食品、水和环境部门的可持续、弹性决策。-加深科学家之间的互动，企业、政策制定者和非政府组织。

Soils are a life support system for global society and our planet. Soils directly provide the vast majority of our food; they are the largest store of carbon in the earth system; and they regulate water quality and quantity reducing the risk of floods, droughts and pollution. In this way, soils provide a natural form of infrastructure that is critical to supporting both rural and urban communities and economies. Despite the criticality of this infrastructure, we do not understand: - the current delivery of services in terms of food production, water flow and quality regulation and carbon storage - from which soils do these services derive and what value do they have for rural/urban communities? - how the decisions we make regarding land drainage, tillage, crop choice, livestocking, tree planting, deforestation, and urban development influence the capability of the soil to provide its' multiple services, or how these decisions may interact. - how resilient our soil infrastructure will be to a changing climate and the increasing pressures to produce more food from less land that our global society faces in trying to feed a population of 9 billion by 2050, and ongoing urbanisation.This lack of understanding stems from a lack of integration across traditionally separate scientific fields that relate to soil infrastructure. Soil functioning is the product of hydrological, physical (soil erosion and weathering), biological and chemical processes, and as such it requires knowledge to be combined across these fields. This fellowship will draw together these disciplines to create a new computer model that will improve our understanding of soil infrastructures, their value to society and their resilience. This model will be used to explore how future scenarios will influence the provision of food-water-carbon services to our societies. Uncertainty and risk analyses will be performed to provide a coherent robust evidence base for decision-making. This will allow us to find ways to enhance our soils to provide more benefits for our societies, improving sustainability and well-being.This fellowship aims to:a. Assess the value of soils as a natural infrastructure that protects and enhances both rural and urban areas through food production, water regulation and carbon storage.b. Estimate the resilience of soil infrastructure to climate change and changing land-use pressures and explore the potential for managing soil infrastructures to mitigate risks and enhance their value and resilience.c. Transform the perceived value of soil infrastructure in communities and businesses, and enhance decision-making capabilities across sectors to help create sustainable resilient societies.The outputs of this fellowship will include:- Scientific insights into soil functioning, sustainability and resilience.- The first valuations of soil as an infrastructure, it's capacity for enhancement, and it's vulnerability to a changing climate and increasing land use pressures.- Estimates of the uncertainties surrounding these estimations, and how this influences to the risk to delivery of food, water and carbon services.- Quantitative predictive modelling frameworks that can support sustainable, resilient decision making across food, water and environment sectors.- Deepened engagement between scientists, businesses, policy makers, and NGOs.