Denmark
Description
The chosen Danish NBS site is situated in Northern Jutland and represents part of the Limfjord catchment, which connects the North Sea and the Kattegat and covers an area of 260,000 ha where approximately 63% is agriculture.
The land use of the NBS site resembles the average national land use. Furthermore, the site partly covers the national range of both biodiversity scores (0-16 score – where 20 is the highest at the national level) as well as N retention percentages (5-100%), which makes the site representative for the Danish region.
Challenges
With a national costal N reduction goal of approximately 13,000 ton N/yr by 2027, approximately 28% of this are to be reduced from the catchment surrounding the Limfjord and half of this should be reduced from the chosen NBS site (1500 ton N/yr). There is a need for a combination of measures and a higher level of stakeholder involvement if the goals are to be delivered. One solution of setting aside large amounts of agricultural land could compromise the economic profit of agricultural areas (Ørum et al., 2017), and are therefore not seen as a plausible solution. Therefore, innovative NBS that are targeted at individual catchments with the involvement of relevant stakeholders are needed for socio-ecological transformation.
The Danish partners will assess the NBS from systems approach thereby helping to define, monitor, and assess NBS effects at field/local, farm, landscape, and regional level - embracing the whole system.
trans4num NBS test site
For the Danish site trans4num selected two NBS:
- Changes in crop rotations (Circular and N crop-rotation) towards more biomass crops, including perennial crops, e.g. grass production and grass clover mixtures for biorefinery purposes to produce protein to feed monogastric animals and fiber for ruminants (Hermansen et al., 2017; Børgesen et al., 2018).
A replacement of cereal with grass will facilitate changes in field and crop rotations (local level) and influence farm nutrient balances, local climate accounts, and potentially benefit positive effects in surrounding nature areas and the aquatic environments such as the Fjord (landscape/regional level) (Odgaard et al., 2019b). Furthermore, other farm types using biorefinery products will also be influenced (system level).
- Biobased fertilizer from organic waste
Use of biobased fertilizers from manure and other waste streams in replacement of chemical fertilizers will increase the circular use of nutrients and potentially decrease N loss to the environment while enhancing the farmer’s profit.
