One of the main objectives of Soil Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’ is to develop a harmonised soil monitoring framework to assess policy impacts and trends in soil health. It is therefore necessary to integrate the current knowledge on existing monitoring programmes and harmonise the approaches used across Europe. It was emphasized in the Soil Mission implementation plan that current EU monitoring is hampered by inadequate or inactive soil monitoring programs in many EU Member States and limited availability or lack of relevant data. One of the current gaps in soil monitoring is the insufficient coverage of soils located in urban, forest or industrial areas. This is being addressed by the PREPSOIL project, whose main objective is to implement the 'A Soil Deal for Europe' mission in European regions, by helping key actors to reduce soil degradation, while increasing soil awareness and knowledge.
A detailed review of projects funded by the European Union related to soil monitoring issues and the soil health indicators used was carried out. In addition, existing national experiences on monitoring with a special focus on non-agricultural area were analysed. These results may constitute the basis for a broader discussion on future monitoring of non-agricultural soils especially in a context of implementation new directive on soil monitoring and resilience.
Acknowledgements
This research has been carried out within the framework of the PREPSOIL project ‘Preparing for the ‘Soil Deal for Europe’ Mission’ founded by European Union’s Horizon Europe programme under grant agreement No 101070045. |