Tóth, G., L. Montanarella, Gy. Várallyay, T. Tóth, and N. Filippi. 2006. Strengthening 
optimal food chain element transportby minimizing soil degradation. 
Recommendations for soil threats identification on different scales in the 
European Union. Cereal Research Communications. 34: (No.1) 335-338. 

A proposal for common criteria for delineation of areas in risk of soil 
degradation has been prepared (JRC-IES 2005). It should be achievable in 
the further development of the soil thematic strategy to develop a common 
framework, which attempts to keep the linkage of soil information in EU 
Member States with pan-European data, and thus provides comparable data, 
which can be interpreted in a meaningful way not only for the member 
states, but also for continental-wide Europe. Much efforts still have to be 
conducted to establish an efficient workflow for updating and maintaining 
thematic layers with highly detailed information, more particularly in a 
participatory approach, involving bottom-up transfer of spatial information 
from local to global level. The new "Multiscale European Soil Information 
System" (Panagos et al. 2006) should be integrated into more 
comprehensive/multi-layer monitoring and reporting programmes, for 
example the Commission's Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe 
initiative. In this manner the infrastructure and access to soil information 
transfer can be developed to assist the protection of the multifunctionality of 
soils (Van-Camp et al. 2004, Várallyay 2003) and contribute to optimal food 
chain element transport.