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Project Topic
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SOILS4MED has the following objectives:1) Engage with stakeholders (SH) in line with the EU Soil Mission’s Living Lab approach, develop capacities, and raise SH awareness on the benefits deriving from increased investment in soil data and information (SDI); 2) develop policy relevant integrated indicator sets and a LUCAS-like soil monitoring protocol, adapted to the environmental specificities and SH needs of the Mediterranean region (MR), for region-wide harmonized assessment of soil ecosystem health; 3) validate the monitoring protocol in study areas representing major agroecologies and soil types across the MR, generating the first ever large harmonized soil health open access dataset for the MR. 4) Demonstrate the capacity of the SDI produced by the protocol, integrated by legacy soil data, to feed multiple state of art tools to support sustainable soil and water management (SSWM), land degradation neutrality, ecosystem service assessment, precision farming, and to support the generation of regional soil condition maps including carbon stock maps; and 5) design and implement a tailored, easily accessible, standardized soil information system (SIS) for the effective management and use of SDI for the assessment of soil health in the MR. These project objectives will be achieved by developing and adapting innovative methods and also by investing in SH engagement and scientific integration, in capacity development, and in dissemination and awareness raising. The latter will be supported by an innovative knowledge management online platform and by the use of social media. Strong collaborations and synergies with relevant international projects and initiatives will be major enablers of the project success and impact. The project will particularly synergize with SDI harmonization efforts conducted by FAO’s Global Soil Partnership and with ongoing regional soil health mapping initiatives by JRC and FAO. The project objectives have been explicitly designed to address all the specific Call challenges, scope, and impacts, as pointed out in detail by the proposal. This alignment stems from the partners’ long time engagement to support international initiatives on SDI availability and use in the MR. SOILS4MED fully shares the Call vision that in the MR there is an urgent need to improve availability and accessibility of SDI and to harmonise methodologies to develop standardised soil information systems (SIS), and that this change is an essential enabling condition towards protecting, restoring, improving SEH, and towards informing decisions on SSWM and on major global natural resource issues in the region (CC, food security, biodiversity loss, etc.).
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