How do we account for soil biodiversity and change to assess soil condition for the delivery of ecosystem services?

土壤为生命提供重要功能，生产食物、过滤水、回收废物和调节气候。维持功能要求我们了解如何最好地管理我们的环境资源，这些资源用于人类的经济活动。此外，我们需要了解生态系统如何通过生物多样性等方式为社会带来益处，并确定如何在决策中考虑和重视这一点。我们的很多决策都是基于经济指标，比如国家层面的国内生产总值（GDP）。这些经济指标被广泛用于评估经济活动，但是，它们没有考虑到自然、对自然的利用，也没有考虑到我们从自然服务中获得的好处。国内生产总值没有从国民收入中扣除自然资源枯竭的直接成本，也没有考虑到我们的资源开采对维持生命的地球系统的持续运作所产生的影响。因此，除了保护自然，我们还需要新的方法来确定生物多样性生态系统带来的好处，并将更多的自然资源利用纳入政策和经济思维。该研究项目通过开发新的和创新的方法来评估土壤和生态系统生物多样性，以及在国家农业环境背景下土壤如何随着管理而变化，从而解决国内生产总值的不足。我们将使用2013年采用的新的联合国GDP卫星核算系统，即环境经济核算系统（SEEA）作为指导框架。在此，我们将分析独特的Glastir农业环境监测数据的土壤和生态系统，以了解地上和地下土壤和生态系统条件之间的联系。我们将确定可以用作会计框架内指标的关系，以报告土壤生态系统的状态和变化。所有这些工作都将有助于更好地了解我们自然资产的价值。

Soils provide important functions for life, producing food, filtering water, recycling waste and regulating climate. Maintaining functionality requires that we understand how best to manage our environmental resources, which are used in human economic activity. Moreover, we need to understand how ecosystems provide benefits to society, e.g. through biodiversity and determine how to account for and value this in decision making. Much of our decision making is based on economic indicators, like gross domestic product (GDP) at national levels. These economic indicators are widely used to assess economic activity, but, they don't account for nature the use of nature, nor the benefits we get from natures services. GDP does not deduct the direct cost of the depletion of natural resources on national income, nor does it take into account the impact that our resource extraction has on the continued functioning of the earth system for life support. Therefore, as well as protecting nature, we need new approaches to identify benefits derived from biodiverse ecosystems as well as incorporating more of our natural resource use into policy and economic thinking. This research project addresses the deficiency in GDP by developing new and innovative ways to assess soil and ecosystem biodiversity, and how soils change in response to management in a national agri-environment context. We will use the new United Nations GDP satellite accounting system adopted in 2013, the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA), as a guiding framework. Within this we will analyze the unique Glastir agri-environment monitoring data for soils and ecosystems to understand linkages between above and below ground soil and ecosystem condition. We will identify relationships that can be used as indicators within accounting frameworks to report on the state and change of soil ecosystems. All of this work will contribute toward a better understanding of the value of our natural assets.