BonaRes Centre

The overarching goal of the BonaRes Centre is to establish a community of stakeholders that improves the scientific basis for sustainable soil management, taking into account the productivity of agricultural land and the preservation of other essential soil functions. As important products, together with the collaborative projects, data sets and modelling tools are being developed in order to evaluate and predict the effects of various agricultural management measures on soil fertility and other soil functions. Recommendations for action for agriculture and politics are derived from this. To achieve this goal, the BonaRes Centre raises public awareness of soil as a resource. It supports and integrates the basic research of the joint projects and provides a data repository through which freely available soil-related data, including data from long-term agricultural field trials, can be accessed. It also provides software-supported decision support tools (models) for practical use, which are based on the latest scientific findings and provide suitable indicators for evaluating soil functions and the effects of management measures. All infrastructures and products developed are accessible in the long term via the BonaRes portal bonares.de.

The major challenge of the BonaRes system approach was to bring together researchers from different soil and agriculture-related disciplines and to find a common language. In addition to interdisciplinary collaboration within the projects, this was achieved through thematic workshops, joint publications, status seminars and conferences.

A soil-related repository for research data and long-term field experiments, an online map of European long-term field experiments and a soil profile database have been set up. The data from the BonaRes and Rhizo4Bio networks and external projects are made available for free re-use via this platform in accordance with the latest standards.

A particular scientific challenge of the BonaRes Centre was to bring together existing and newly acquired knowledge about soil processes and their complex interactions. The main focus was on understanding the importance of soil organisms and their interaction in a physically and chemically very heterogeneous environment. The ‘Knowledge Library’ was set up, a freely accessible knowledge database that summarizes the knowledge available in the literature on the influence of management measures on soil functions on a site-specific basis.

In collaboration with the joint projects, the modelling tools BODIUM and BODIUM4Farmers (in German, for the area of Germany) were developed, which are able to predict the effects of soil management measures on soil functions, taking into account local conditions in terms of soil type, land use and climate. As an important basis for the modelling, high-resolution maps of relevant soil properties were generated for the scale of Germany using various methods of regionalization. The systemic approach also takes into account the interactions with social and economic systems, which have a significant influence on soil management decisions and thus on the natural environment. Soil-promoting management options are analyzed in terms of their social, economic and ecological effects, including under the framework conditions to be expected in the future, and political control instruments are proposed on this basis. This can be expected to make an important contribution to a sustainable balance of interests between economy and ecology.

The BonaRes Centre has contributed to the perception of soil as an essential resource through various public relations measures, such as trade fair appearances, the creation of fact sheets, brochures and teaching materials, the Citizen Science campaign ‘Expedition Erdreich’ and the patronage of the Soil of the Year 2024 ‘Arable Soil’. Products and services as well as scientific results from the BonaRes programme are made permanently available via a web portal (bonares.de).

With the data repository, the online map of long-term field trials, the BODIUM and BODIUM4Farmers models, the assessment portal and the BonaRes web portal, the BonaRes Centre for Soil Research has created important structures for sustainable soil use, which will also be made available by the project partners in the long term. The integrative work of the BonaRes Centre has created an interdisciplinary community of researchers and other stakeholders that can provide expert knowledge on sustainable soil management.

About the Project:

Goal and approach

Most important findings

Outlook

People and Partners

Project Leaders

Partner Organizations

Contacts

BonaRes Centre

News

Publications

Work Packages

Data Repository

Knowledge (KLIB) & Structure Library

BODIUM Approach

BODIUM Approach

Web-Tools - Designing results

Outreach & Public Relation

Videos