A key objective of the EU Soil Observatory is to support research and innovation, and to
intensify targeted research, data and monitoring on soils. This includes supporting the Mission Soil,
and the EUSO’s in-house research activities.

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SUPPORTING THE MISSION SOIL

The Horizon Europe Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’ (Mission Soil) of the Horizon Europe research programme directly supports the implementation of the EU Soil Strategy for 2030 by finding solutions to protect and restore soil health. Through the Mission Soil, an increasingly integrated research community is further developing a knowledge base and tools that can be used by land managers to ensure that healthy soils allow for sustainable food production, sustain soil biodiversity, and support functions that preserve ecosystem services. The objective of the Mission Soil is to build a network of 100 living labs and lighthouses to lead the transition towards healthy soils. Soil health living labs will be partnerships between multiple and diverse partners, like researchers, farmers, foresters, spatial planners, land managers, and citizens who come together to co-create innovations for a jointly agreed objective.

EUSO is actively involved in, and responsible for, the soil monitoring elements of the Mission Soil. It also contributes to its annual work programme. Furthermore, EUSO worked in close collaboration with some of the Mission Soil projects.  The EU Soil Observatory will integrate research outcomes of the Mission Soil projects and will become the repository for the projects outputs.

ESDAC also contains a repository of soil projects from previous EU Framework Programmes.

EUSO’S IN-HOUSE RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

The EUSO contributes directly to advanced scientific knowledge on soils in the EU through its in-house research activities. Over the past 10 years, the Soil Group of the JRC (EUSO) has published more than 445 scientific papers, of which 46 in 2024, 46 in 2023 and 40 in 2022. Mostly, these papers has published their datasets in ESDAC. An important number of papers has been published in high impact factor journals: Nature, Nature Climate Change, Nature Communications, Science, Science Advances, PNAS, Global Change Biology, Science of the Total Environment, etc. Almost all papers are published in Open Access.

Here is a shortlist of some EUSO scientific papers:

2024

• A unifying modelling of multiple land degradation pathways in Europe. (Nature Communications) - 2024
• How the EU Soil Observatory is providing solid science for healthy soils. European Journal of Soil Science - 2024
• Soil health is associated with higher primary productivity across Europe. Nature ecology & evolution - 2024
• Fire effects on geomorphic processes - 2024
• Cadmium in topsoils of the European Union–an analysis based on LUCAS topsoil database - 2024

2023

• Patterns in soil microbial diversity across Europe - 2023 
• Projected landscape-scale repercussions of global action for climate and biodiversity protection  - 2023 
• Soil biodiversity needs policy without borders - 2023
• Policy implications of multiple concurrent soil erosion processes in European farmland - 2023 
• The overlooked threat of land take from wind energy infrastructures: Quantification, drivers and policy gaps - 2023

Key results and outcomes of the main research activities of EUSO can be found in the EUSO bulletin of the year 2023, 2022 and 2021.