EU Soil Observatory (EUSO) - Newsletter September 2025

EUSO Stakeholder Forum 2025 - Part III: Soil challenges and solutions in the Mediterranean

Part III of the EUSO Stakeholders Forum 2025 will take place on 9 October 2025 at Villa Europa in Rome (hybrid form). Participants will have the opportunity to reflect on Mediterranean soils. The forum will bring together recent research on degradational processes and innovative solutions in the Mediterranean area, focussing on sustainability, resilience, and adapting to climate and landscape challenges. The forum will also highlight current policy frameworks and collaboration efforts, ending with a panel discussion and outlining next steps.

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Draft agenda

Continental scale soil monitoring

Selecting appropriate soil indicators across Europe is challenging due to diverse climate, topography, geology, and soil types. Therefore, establishing clear principles and criteria for soil indicator selection is essential. Thanks to a fruitful collaboration between EUSO and the Mission Soil project AI4SoilHealth, four distinct frameworks for soil quality assessment were identified and described: ‘Fitness for Purpose’, ‘Free from Degradation’, ‘External Benchmarking’ and ‘Value Assessment’, with each possessing a unique role and application. The ‘Free from Degradation’ framework is particularly suitable for pan-European assessments as conducted in the EUSO Soil Degradation Dashboard.

Publication on Continental Scale Soil Monitoring

Report on the Indicator Framework used at EUSO

Publication on the EUSO Soil Degradation Dashboard

EUSO at EUROSOIl 2025

EUSO was well represented at EUROSOIL 2025, highlighting recent research results and policy perspectives on soil health at the EU scale. Panos Panagos opened the conference with a keynote presentation on Improving Soil Health in Europe. EUSO also hosted the EUSO Stakeholders Forum, bringing together new developments and results from the Mission Soil projects. In total, the EUSO team members chaired 2 sessions, joined 1 panel discussion and delivered 8 presentations.

Presentations of the 5th EUSO Stakeholder Forum in EUROSOIL

EUROSOIL

Projected Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) changes by 2070 under the RCP4.5 scenario

Loss of SOC is one of the main threats to European and global soils. The impact of climate change, especially warming, on SOC varies by regions but remains poorly understood. To address this, we used a Random Forest algorithm to model SOC in topsoil of Europe based on LUCAS data and applied SHapley Additive exPlanations values to interpret spatial patterns. This dataset includes the prediction SOC in 2070 under the RCP4.5 scenario with changes compared to a 2018 baseline. Under the RCP4.5 scenario, projected warming over the next 50 years could lead to significant SOC loss around the southern Baltic Sea (55°N-60°N), while regions north of 65°N could experience SOC gains.

Data

Publication

23rd World Congress of Soil Science