Materials to Land: Supporting better regulation and sustainable soil use decisions

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Recovery of appropriate waste and waste-derived materials, including biosolids, to land is an important source of nutrients and soil improvers, reducing costs to both industry and land managers, while improving resource efficiency. This is an increasing market, with a widening diversity of source materials being used to create these products, but they may also present challenges in relation to their composition, for instance by containing potentially toxic elements. It is thus important that the landspreading of these materials does not lead to unacceptable risks to human health and the environment. The chemical composition of soils varies greatly due to inputs from both natural (geological) and contaminant (anthropogenic) sources of elements. Therefore, there are substantial concentration variations over the landscape, as demonstrated by the large systematic national soil geochemistry datasets held in BGS, from NERC funded science programmes. These highlight how some rock formations give rise, entirely naturally, to soils with elevated concentrations of elements such as lead, cadmium and nickel in specific areas. There are also clear anthropogenic influences, with urban centres and historical mining areas often having elevated concentrations of these elements, amongst others.We have established, with project partners, that the soil data present opportunity to support informed decision making at multiple scales, through mapping predicted of soil chemical composition between the sampled sites. Being able to predict at unsampled locations is important to consider what the likely soil composition may be at a candidate site for application of these organic materials. This approach would provide information not only on predicted concentrations, but an indication of the confidence that any given prediction has attached to it (using the science of geostatistics). We will demonstrate this for England, using selected chemical elements.This methodology is particularly applicable to the regulator (Environment Agency (EA), where a paucity of this type of information is currently creating a policy challenge. The soil predictions will be examined at a local scale to support EA decisions on licence applications, but can also be used by farming businesses, and sellers, to make a preliminary assessment to help inform their decisions on the likely suitability of land to receive a given material, and more general protection of soil quality. The National Farmers Union are also project partners, to help produce outputs which will help farmers. On a regional/national scale these maps will benefit the EA and the Food Standards Agency in making strategic, regional, assessments of soil chemical quality and any risks these may present to human and environmental health, now or under plausible scenarios which can be tested with these mapped outputs. Sustained inter-organisational and inter-personal communication will ensure successful project progress and these effective networks will be continued post-funding. We will ensure wide visibility and uptake through engaging with relevant bodies within our project partners, and with other representative bodies with which they have links. Integration of feedback from both those with regulatory responsibilities and representatives of the farming sector will support outputs which are comprehensible to farming stakeholders. We have ensured sustainable web-hosting of outputs beyond project funding, and outputs will be available free-of-charge. The methodology will serve as an exemplar across the UK's devolved administrations and beyond, as well as for other contaminants which are of concern and for which data becomes available.KEYWORDS: soil; biosolids; contaminants; regulation; farming.