This platform is designed to support researchers in conducting state of the art assessments for evaluating impacts of agricultural soil management. Furthermore, it is addressed to a wider audience to aid understanding and interpretation of published impact assessments results.

The platform is structured to follow the process of conducting impact assessments, starting with a short theoretical background, the setting of system boundaries and the definition of purpose and decision making level, and concluding with methods to integrate findings for multiple impact areas into a single assessment. Readers are welcome to either follow this process or to look up individual sections that are relevant for them.

The length of the sections is inhomogeneous, which to some degree is a reflection of project-related work schedules, but which is also partly on purpose. A strong emphasis is given to the structured selection of impact areas, because this is the stage with the highest risk of introducing bias. A second focus is on factors that are difficult to include in impact assessments and that are therefore often not considered by studies, such as leakage effects, indirect land uses changes or rebound effects. With regard to the latter, we were able to draw on new research findings generated within the BonaRes project. Finally, we put a focus on soil related ecosystem services within the European Environment Agency’s CICES classification, because we perceive a lack of standardization in current research on ecosystem services to be an impairment to systematic reviews and to a transfer of research findings.

We hope you find this platform and the BonaRes Impact Assessment Platform interesting and helpful, and we welcome any feedback that helps us to further improve them.