SF Box - A tool for evaluating effects on ecological soil functions in remediation projects

Report, 2013

The proposed EU Soil Framework Directive from 2006 has recognized soil functions as critical for ecosystem survival and human well-being. To meet emerging regulatory requirements on soil protection, this report presents an Excel-based tool, SF Box, for evaluating the effects on soil functions in remediation projects. The evaluation of ecological soil function is based on scoring of a set of soil quality indicators and computing a soil quality class for each remediation alternative. In order to evaluate the effects of remediation alternatives on soil functions, a soil quality class for each alternative is compared against the soil quality class in the reference alternative. By doing so, the SF Box tool provides a summary of the effects caused by remediation alternatives on soil functions, where the effects are scored between -2 representing “very negative effect” and +2 representing “very positive effect”. A score of 0 represents “no effect”. For demonstrating the basic possibilities of SF Box, the report includes examples on soil function evaluation in remediation projects.