Soil Health Benchmarks
Building a European network to advance soil health research, monitor soil health and advocate for sustainable land use
Project budget
11.610.406,25€
Climate Farmers Academy Share
754.375€
Funding source
Horizon Europe
Project start date
01.01.2023 – 31.12.2027
More information on our project website
Project Description
Soils provide food, clean water, habitats for biodiversity and other important services. There is no life without them. In this context, the EU-funded BENCHMARKS project will co-design an Integrated Soil Health Monitoring Framework, which will build upon the assessment of soil-based ecosystem functions to co-develop an interactive soil health dashboard.
The aim is to guide the selection of appropriate soil health indicators, soil health assessment and indexation, and recommendation of management practices to support soil health. The dashboard will be designed for different stakeholders in urban, agricultural and forestry land use systems. Its proposed indicators (sample-based measurements and data, and model-derived statistics), space and citizen science observations will be tested in landscape case studies across Europe.
The Integrated Soil Health Monitoring Framework serves three key functions to facilitate the quantification of soil health potential and status within a given context:
- Indicator selection based on objective, context and practices
- Soil health assessment calculating the soil health index based on indicator measurements
- Management optimisation provides recommendations on which practices can be applied to further optimise soil health for a given site.
The scientific co-creation of the cognitive model is based on over 30.000 soil samples taken across 11 European countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland) and 29 case-study site representing 3 land-use type agriculture, forestry and urban.
Project outcomes
Soil Health Dashboard
Decision support tool to pick most suitable soil health indicators fitting best for the climatic, geographical and land-use context
Serious Game on Soil Health
Interactive card game showing the effects of soil management decisions in regard to its health and resilience
Dataset of +30k samples
Huge set of sampling data on chemical, physical and biological parameters from 29 different sites
Soil Health Coaching
Active supporting of actors interested to measure soil health as part of their operations or business models
Our project activities
Coordinating the project communication
Together with our partners of Ersilia Foundation we are in charge of the whole project’s communication channels reaching from websites over social media channels to specific formats such as podcasts, videos and newsletters. Our in-house designers develop the templates for the project communication like posters, presentation designs and the overall project branding.
Preparation of glossary of soil health terminologies
Together with AGES we developed a glossary with definitions for specific soil health related terminologies. In the process, we involved leading soil scientists from all over the BENCHMARKS project to assure a high quality and standard. The glossary aims to harmonize certain understandings and to serve as a source for AI-driven meta tagging of datasets and papers in the field of soil health.
Engagement a soil health stakeholder network
We are developing and conducting two rounds of 21 workshops with over 650 participants to collect needs and challenges from land stewards across our 11 project countries. The aim of this engagement is to give a voice to the practical demands and challenges of land managers in their region and spread the final learning from our projects. Another important stakeholder that we are addressing are European and national policy makers specifically regarding the Soil Monitoring Law, CAP and Nature Restoration Law.
Uptake of soil health measurement
We actively support actors that are interested in implementing soil health measurements across agriculture, forestry and urban land-uses. This includes supply chain actors on a regional level like food distributors or companies, national actors like research networks and governmental authorities and actors on a European and global scale like standardisation groups or the EU.
Project Partners
Our partners
Our partners
