Ecosystem Services Provided by Contaminated Soil

The LIA ECOLAND is a joint international laboratory created in 2015 by the Laboratoire Sols et Environnement of the Université de Lorraine and INRA and the Laboratory of Environmental Pollution Control and Remediation Technologies of the Sun Yat-sen University of Guangzhou, China. The renewal (2023) of the LIA follows on from the fruitful collaborations carried out since 2015 by INRAE, the University of Lorraine and Sun-Yat Sen University, in the first phase of the Ecoland project. Ecoland 2 has been extended to include a new partner, the South China Agricultural University (SCAU). The main objectives of the LIA are to understand the dynamics of pollutants in soils and the potential of large contaminated territories (e.g. farmland contaminated with mine effluents, former mining sites, urban areas) to generate a wide range of ecosystem services (e.g. non-food and food supply, water quality, pollution mitigation, biodiversity, carbon storage, landscape). Three main strategies being studied to improve the value of these territories are: i) the production of healthy food on contaminated soils based on genetic resources and the modification of soil properties; ii) the production of biomass for industrial or food use on degraded and contaminated soils (e.g. mining sites); and iii) the recycling by agromining of the metals present in contaminated soils. The cooperation is based on intensive exchanges of students (e.g. masters and doctorates) and professors. Annual workshops are organized alternately in France and China. The LIA is also a gateway for other scientific groups (e.g. LRGP, LIEC) to initiate new collaborations and broaden the scope of cooperation between the institutions.