A 1 billion euro mission: A Soil Deal for Europe

Abstract

Soils have achieved prominence in the political agenda of the European Commission with the proposal for a Soil Monitoring Law and the ambitious Soil Mission research framework. The EU Soil Observatory (EUSO) used the latest state‐of‐the‐art pan‐European datasets to propose a preliminary assessment of soil health in the EU based on 18 soil degradation proxy indicators. The body of knowledge will soon be enriched thanks to the investment of 1 billion euros towards the Mission ‘A Soil Deal for Europe’, which has the ambition to promote the development of new harmonized bottom‐up and top‐down soil health indicators. New data and knowledge are also anticipated through the national soil monitoring schemes to support the implementation of the Soil Monitoring Law. We present the Soil Mission roadmap towards assessing and achieving soil health in the EU by 2030 to meet Green Deal objectives. We introduce the EUSO Soil Health Dashboard, a soil degradation indicator tool using soil health indicators developed by the European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC) (2012–2023) that will contribute to Soil Monitoring Law assessments.

Editorial of the Special Issue Digital Soil Mapping, Decision Support Tools and Soil Monitoring Systems in the Mediterranean

“…The operational use of digital soil mapping (DSM) for precision farming has emerged as a critical activity in modern agriculture, benefiting from technological advancements such as remote sensing [22], decision support systems [23][24][25], web-based soil modeling and mapping, and cloud computing [1,26]. This aligns with the new European soil mission [27] aimed at addressing climate change [28] and environmental challenges, emphasizing the importance of soil maps in supporting sustainable development and climate mitigation efforts [29,30].…”