The European Commission, as part of the mission for Soil Health and Food (SH&F), has set a goal to have 75% of European soils healthy or significantly improved by 2030. This goal aligns with other major European initiatives such as the Green Deal and the EU’s Farm-to-Fork strategy, as well as preparations for a new EU law on soil health protection, aimed at protecting soils on the same legal basis as air and water.
Measuring the success of these public and private initiatives through the harmonized monitoring of European soils is an essential but hugely complex task. It requires consistent but context-specific monitoring across multiple scales and land uses in all EU Member States.
To address these challenges, the Horizon Europe project “BENCHMARKS,” which involves 29 partners from across Europe including CRISP, aims to develop and evaluate a transparent, harmonized, and cost-effective multiscale and multi-user monitoring framework that aims to provide a clear soil health index for benchmarking, using relevant assessment indicators that are applicable to land use and logistically feasible. This work is supported by 31 case studies across Europe (7 more than the original 24) where the indicators are tested; CRISP is responsible for 3 case studies, all in the Campania region.
From February 19 to 22, the Annual General Meeting of the BENCHMARKS project took place in Coimbra (Portugal), where the work carried out during the first year of the project was presented, and the groundwork was laid for future actions, mainly related to the upcoming start of the soil sampling campaign in the case studies across Europe.
