Soil compaction has negative impacts on soil ecosystem services, such as food production, groundwater
recharge and climate regulation. The extent, magnitude, and spatio-temporal variability
of the environmental and economic impacts of compaction remain unknown. In this study, we
develop a novel framework that couples a soil-compaction-agroecosystem model with climate
projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) to systematically predict
changes in crop yield, nitrogen losses, soil carbon stocks and surface water runoff from compacted
arable land across Europe. Simulations were conducted at 0.11’ spatial resolution under the high
emissions Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP585) scenario. This was done for winter wheat, the
most widespread crop in Europe, by considering an ensemble of three compaction levels (representing
wheel loads of 4, 6 and 8 Mg) and projections from five climate models. The simulation
outcomes were used to estimate the economic costs of compaction. We compared compaction
induced changes in variables related to soil ecosystem services for the Near Future (NF, centred
about year 2030), Mid-term (MT, 2050) and End of Century time horizons (EOC, 2090). We estimated
annual compaction induced economic cost due to losses of crop yield, carbon and nitrogen
for Europe to be approximately 7 ± 0.3, 5 ± 0.5 and 2.7 ± 0.3 billion € per year for the NF, MT,
and EOC, respectively, with the decreasing trend attributed to overall decreasing yields due to climate
change. In addition, the continental economic cost of flooding by soil compaction induced
increase in runoff were estimated as 3 ± 0.7, 3.1 ± 0.6 and 3.2 ± 0.5 billion € for the NF, MT and
EOC, respectively. Our simulations indicate the negative impact of soil compaction on soil services
under future climate scenarios, adding additional challenges for sustainable future agroecosystems.
This further highlights the need to develop policies that protect soil by mitigating soil compaction
through improved traffic management practices, soil recovery measures, and the development of
new agricultural machinery.