AREFLH is a partner of LivingSoiLL – “Healthy Soil to Permanent Crops Living Labs”, an Horizon Europe project funded by the European Commission.
This month AREFLH shares the article "Science Beneath Our Feet" of Ruth Pereira from the University of Aveiro. She is the Director of GreenUPorto – Research Center for Sustainable Agro-food Production, and the Scientific Coordinator of the Associated Laboratory INOV4Agro. Her research focuses on terrestrial and aquatic ecotoxicology, risk assessment of contaminated sites and emerging chemical substances, and soil health, with particular emphasis on chemical and biological indicators.
Comment on Froger et al., 2024, paper:
"Under the upcoming Soil Monitoring Law (SML), EU Member States (MS) will be required to assess and monitor soil health across their territories. This data will support decision-making on sustainable soil management and restoration practices, such as increasing soil carbon storage.
Soil monitoring at the EU level is relatively recent, while some MS have had national soil information monitoring systems (N-SIMS) in place for decades. However, there is a lack of harmonization across MS, with varying sampling designs, soil properties measured, and data coverage. This makes comparisons difficult.
The LUCAS topsoil survey has emerged as a promising approach to harmonize data collection across Europe, but it also has limitations: underrepresentation of certain land uses, shifting sampling locations between campaigns, inconsistent depth sampling, and limited analysis of some soil parameters.
Froger et al. (2024) evaluated the feasibility of combining LUCAS data with N-SIMS, focusing on three soil properties (clay content, organic carbon [OC], and pH) and two soil health indicators (OC/clay ratio and pH classes). They found that only clay content showed consistency across both monitoring systems. Discrepancies in the indicators were attributed to differences in sampling depth, design, and analytical methods.
The authors conclude that N-SIMS and LUCAS serve different but complementary purposes, and neither can replace the other. Harmonizing analytical protocols is not advisable, as it would hinder MS from using historical data. Instead, efforts should focus on including common measurements in N-SIMS, using common sampling sites to develop transfer functions, and estimating uncertainty between methods.
Finally, the paper stresses that while harmonization is difficult at the national level, it is essential within Living Labs (LLs) and experimental sites to ensure comparability and transferability of practices. The adoption of the LUCAS methodology in LLs can enhance soil monitoring, support the EU Soil Mission, and demonstrate the contribution of LLs to improving soil health on a continental scale."
To read the full article "Science Beneath Our Feet" from the Lining SoiLL website, click here
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You an also read all previous articles written by AREFLH on this project here
This project receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement Nr. 101157502.