PROPOSED ASSESSMENT OF THE VULNERABILITY OF EUROPEAN SOILS TO POLLUTION USING A SOTER SHELL APPROACH

After recent unanticipated occurrences of environmental pollution caus ed by the time-delayed and sudden release of contaminants previously b elieved to be held firmly in soils, awareness has increased that the v ulnerability of soils to chemical degradation needs to be assessed and mapped. Although some soils appear to be capable of receiving and hol ding chemical compounds while at the same time retaining their ecologi cal functions, others are readily damaged. Procedures for identifying areas where vulnerable soils occur are presented, with special referen ce to the minimum soil data sets that would be required in a small sca le study at the European level using geographical information systems. These data can readily be compiled, stored and processed with the rel ational database management system developed for SOTER, the 1:1 millio n world soil and terrain digital database project of the International Society of Soil Science, which is co-ordinated by the International S oil Reference and Information Centre. The proposed initial soil vulner ability programme would essentially serve to increase awareness about areas prone to chemical soil degradation, and will form the basis for implementing soil pollution assessment programmes at larger scales (1: 1 M to 1:250 000). The latter national or regional programmes would in clude the identification of the major sources of soil pollution, and m easurement of the accumulated load and the rate of loading according t o uniform and standardized procedures, providing the conceptual basis for developing process based models to assess where particular types o f soil degradation are likely to occur.