The increasing threat of soil degradation presents significant challenges to soil health, especially within agroecosystems that are vital for food security, climate regulation, and economic stability. This growing concern arises from intricate interactions between land use practices and climatic conditions, which, if not addressed, could jeopardize sustainable development and environmental resilience. This review offers a comprehensive examination of soil degradation, including its definitions, global prevalence, underlying mechanisms, and methods of measurement. It underscores the connections between soil degradation and land use, with a focus on socio‐economic consequences. Current assessment methods frequently depend on insufficient data, concentrate on singular factors, and utilize arbitrary thresholds, potentially resulting in misclassification and misguided decisions. We analyze these shortcomings and investigate emerging methodologies that provide scalable and objective evaluations, offering a more accurate representation of soil vulnerability. Additionally, the review assesses both physical and biological indicators, as well as the potential of technologies such as remote sensing, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics for enhanced monitoring and forecasting. Key factors driving soil degradation, including unsustainable agricultural practices, deforestation, industrial activities, and extreme climate events, are thoroughly examined. The review emphasizes the importance of healthy soils in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly concerning food and water security, ecosystem health, poverty alleviation, and climate action. It suggests future research directions that prioritize standardized metrics, interdisciplinary collaboration, and predictive modeling to facilitate more integrated and effective management of soil degradation in the context of global environmental changes.

Ecosystems provide multiple services that are necessary to maintain human life. Agroecosystems are very productive suppliers of biomass-related provisioning ecosystem services, e.g. food, fibre, and energy. At the same time, they are highly dependent on good ecosystem condition and regulating ecosystem services such as soil fertility, water supply or soil erosion regulation. Assessments of this interplay of ecosystem condition and services are needed to understand the relationships in highly managed systems. Therefore, the aim of this study is twofold: First, to test the concept and indicators proposed by the European Union Working Group on Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES) for assessing agroecosystem condition at a regional level. Second, to identify the relationships between ecosystem condition and the delivery of ecosystem services. For this purpose, we applied an operational framework for integrated mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services. We used the proposed indicators to assess the condition of agroecosystems in Northern Germany and regulating ecosystem service control of erosion rates. We used existing data from official databases to calculate the different indicators and created maps of environmental pressures, ecosystem condition and ecosystem service indicators for the Federal State of Lower Saxony. Furthermore, we identified areas within the state where pressures are high, conditions are unfavourable, and more sustainable management practices are needed. Despite the limitations of the indicators and data availability, our results show positive, negative, and no significant correlations between the different pressures and condition indicators, and the control of erosion rates. The idea behind the MAES framework is to indicate the general condition of an ecosystem. However, we observed that not all proposed indicators can explain to what extent ecosystems can provide specific ecosystem services. Further research on other ecosystem services provided by agroecosystems would help to identify synergies and trade-offs. Moreover, the definition of a reference condition, although complicated for anthropogenically highly modified agroecosystems, would provide a benchmark to compare information on the condition of the ecosystems, leading to better land use policy and management decisions.

Process‐based model ling has long been used as a well‐suited tool to simulate soil erosion. Despite a large number of scientific articles that emphasize the role of compacted tramlines for soil erosion and surficial nutrient transport, no study exists that integrates these artificial structures into process‐based modelling at catchment scales. Thus, this study aims to quantify the effects of tramline compaction on soil erosion dynamics within a catchment. For this reason, high‐resolution spatial data (1 × 1 m) have been incorporated into the model EROSION 3D, which was used, calibrated, and tested for a soil erosion event with measured discharge and soil loss data. To quantify the contribution of tramlines to soil erosion, two different model parameterizations have been used: the tramline parameterization (TLP) and the common model parameterization (CP) that disregards the tramlines. The results reveal that: (i) the parameterization of tramlines improved model outcomes; (ii) tramlines significantly contribute to overall soil loss and sediment entrance into the channel network; (iii) the bulk density of tramlines is the most important driver of increases in soil erosion and runoff. Moreover, our investigation suggests that the impact of compacted tramlines have long been underestimated in soil erosion modelling and can assist in the assessment of surficial flow path connectivity. Thus, the integration of tramlines into soil erosion modeling is important for the implementation of adequate soil conservation and water protection measures.

Soil erosion by water is one of the main soil degradation processes worldwide, which leads to declines in natural soil fertility and productivity especially on arable land. Despite advances in soil erosion modelling, the effects of compacted tramlines are usually not considered. However, tramlines noticeably contribute to the amount of soil eroded inside a field. To quantify these effects we incorporated high-resolution spatial tramline data into modelling. For simulation, the process-based soil erosion model EROSION3D has been applied on different fields for a single rainfall event. To find a reasonable balance between computing time and prediction quality, different grid cell sizes (5, 1, and 0.5 m) were used and modelling results were compared against measured soil loss. We found that (i) grid-based models like E3D are able to integrate tramlines, (ii) the share of measured erosion between tramline and cultivated areas fits well with measurements for resolution ≤1 m, (iii) tramline erosion showed a high dependency to the slope angle and (iv) soil loss and runoff are generated quicker within tramlines during the event. The results indicate that the integration of tramlines in soil erosion modelling improves the spatial prediction accuracy, and therefore, can be important for soil conservation planning.

Ecosystems provide multiple services that are necessary to maintain human life and activities. Agroecosystems are very productive suppliers of biomass-related provisioning ecosystem services, e.g. food, fibre and energy. At the same time, they are highly dependent on respective ecosystem condition and regulating ecosystem services such as soil fertility, water supply or soil erosion regulation. Assessments of this interplay of ecosystem conditions and services are very important to understand the relationships in highly managed systems. Therefore, the aim of this study is twofold: First, to test the concept and indicators proposed by the European Union Working Group on Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES) for the assessment of agroecosystem condition at a regional level. Second, to identify the relationships between ecosystem condition and the delivery of ecosystem services. For this purpose, we applied an operational framework for integrated mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services. We used the proposed indicators to assess the condition of agroecosystems in Northern Germany and the provision of the regulating ecosystem service control of erosion rates. We used existing data that are available from official databases for the calculation of the different indicators. We show maps of environmental pressures, ecosystem condition and ecosystem service indicators for the Federal State of Lower Saxony. Furthermore, we identified areas within the state where pressures are high, conditions are limited, and more sustainable management practices are needed. Despite the limitations of the indicators and data availability, our results show positive, negative and no significant correlations between the different pressures and condition indicators, and the control of erosion rates. Although the idea behind the MAES framework is to show the general condition of an ecosystem, when looking at the relationships between condition and ecosystem services, we identified that not all the indicators - as they are proposed- are suitable to explain to what extent ecosystems are able to provide certain ecosystem services. Further research on other ecosystem services provided by agroecosystems would facilitate the identification of synergies and trade-offs. Moreover, the definition of a reference condition, although complicated for anthropogenically highly modified agroecosystems, would provide a benchmark to compare information on the condition of the ecosystems, leading to better land use policy and management decisions