SOIL-SAFE: Employing archaeological insights in the co-design of agricultural soil erosion mitigation

土壤健康对农业生产至关重要，进而对确保粮食安全和实现联合国可持续发展目标，特别是可持续发展目标2（零饥饿）和可持续发展目标15（陆地生命）至关重要。在土壤面临侵蚀风险的地方，通常会采取措施加以预防，最常见的是建造农业梯田，旨在在侵蚀发生之前阻止侵蚀，从而保护土壤。然而，来自坦桑尼亚和埃塞俄比亚的考古研究表明，粮食安全在过去是通过最初允许——甚至可能是鼓励——土壤侵蚀来实现的，因为这允许在河边的沉积物陷阱中捕获被侵蚀的土壤。这有几个重要的好处，因为由水运输和沉积的沉积物质地很好，使它们易于耕作和根系渗透，同时反复沉积导致可灌溉地区肥沃沉积物的深层沉积的积累，并使长期灌溉没有盐碱化-这是灌溉土壤的一个常见问题。事实上，在坦桑尼亚和埃塞俄比亚考察的古代例子中，几个世纪以来都避免了盐碱化。因此，沉积物捕集器可能代表了可持续发展目标15中不可或缺的“土地退化中性”概念的历史实例：部分景观的退化会因其他地方的能力增加而得到缓解。因此，沉积物捕集器可以作为可持续农业发展的模型，但是为了充分评估这一点，必须对侵蚀损失和沉积物捕集的好处之间的权衡进行量化。在与英国、欧洲和东非的农业非政府组织建立关系的基础上，这一伙伴关系将结合考古学、民族植物学和发展研究，共同设计一种跨学科的方法来评估沉积物陷阱的成本和收益，这种方法可以由非政府组织和研究人员（联合或单独）应用，并且具有足够的灵活性，可以适用于全球范围内的一系列社会和生态环境。

Soil health is fundamental to agricultural production and by extension to ensuring food security and achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG 15 (Life on Land). Where soil is at risk of erosion, measures are often put in place to prevent it, most commonly by the construction of agricultural terracing designed to stop erosion before it occurs and thus preserve soils in situ. However, archaeological research from Tanzania and Ethiopia demonstrates that food security was achieved in the past by initially allowing soil erosion to occur - and perhaps even encouraging it - since this permitted the capture of eroded soils in river-side sediment traps. This has several important benefits, because sediments transported and deposited by water are fine in texture making them easy to till and for roots to penetrate, whilst repeated depositions lead to the accumulation of deep deposits of fertile sediments in irrigable locations and enable prolonged irrigation without salinization - a common problem in irrigated soils. Indeed, in the ancient examples examined in Tanzania and Ethiopia salinization was avoided for centuries. The sediment traps may thus represent historic examples of the recent concept of 'land degradation neutrality' that is integral to SDG 15: degradation in one part of the landscape is mitigated by increases in capacity elsewhere. Sediment traps could therefore act as models for sustainable agricultural development, but to fully assess this it is essential to quantifying the trade-offs between erosion losses and the benefits of sediment capture.Building on relationships with agricultural NGOs in the UK, Europe and eastern Africa, this partnership will combine archaeological, ethnobotanical and development studies research to co-design an interdisciplinary method of assessing the costs and benefits of sediment traps that can be applied by NGOs and researchers (either jointly or separately), and which is sufficiently flexible to be applicable in a range of social and ecological environments worldwide.