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Our project

The Soil Health and Food (SH&F) mission board has set the goal to have 75% of European soils healthy or significantly improved by 2030. This is in line with other important European initiatives such as the Green Deal and EU Farm-to-Fork Strategy, as well as with preparations for a new EU law on the protection of Soil Health that aims to protect soils on the same legal basis as air and water. Meanwhile, the private sector too, is proposing explicit visions of sustainable food systems, such as the 1000 landscapes for 1 billion people (1000 landscapes, 2022), the 100-million farmers platform of the World Economic Forum (World Economic Forum, 2022) and the Regen10 initiative of the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD, 2022).

Measuring the success of these public and private initiatives through the harmonised monitoring of European soils is an essential, but enormously complex task. It requires coherent yet context-specific monitoring on multiple scales for multiple land uses across all EU member states.

To address these challenges, BENCHMARKS proposes to aims to collaborate with stakeholders in 24 European case studies to create and evaluate a multi-scale and multi-user focused monitoring framework that is transparent, harmonised and cost-effective. Underpinned by the best scientific knowledge and technologies this framework provides a clear soil health index for benchmarking, using indicators that are pertinent to the objective of assessment, applicable to the land use and logistically feasible.

This Integrated Soil Monitoring Framework combines a newly developed logical sieve method (Zwetsloot et al., 2022) soil health indicator selection, with sample, space (earth observation technologies) and 3 stats (existing and derived data) collection methods.

The framework will be developed for land uses agriculture, forestry and urban, and will be multi-scale (local, landscape, regional and Europe). Key outcomes of the project will be:

  • A harmonised and cost-effective framework for measuring soil health

  • A review of SH&F and BENCHMARKS proposed indicators tested in the 24 Landscape Case Studies

  • An integrated soil health tool demonstrating the links between indicators, soil functions and ecosystem services

  • Scientific underpinning of soil health incentivisation schemes for value-chain businesses

BENCHMARKS works across scales and purposes

BENCHMARKS, scales and purposes

The story behind our logo:

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Our Objectives

Co-develop an Integrated Soil Health Monitoring Framework

Co-develop an Integrated Soil Health Monitoring Framework with stakeholders from our Case Studies, to deliver harmonised and cost-effective indicator- and proxy measurements for the assessment of soil health, capable to demonstrate links between indicators, soil functions and ecosystem services.

Test and validate indicators

Test and validate the SH&F mission indicators as well as other indicators proposed by BENCHMARKS for the different land uses and at different scales, and establish context specific thresholds for these indicators.

Develop a European broad sampling framework

Develop a European broad sampling framework, methodology and protocols, which can serve to support relevant EU policy, regulation and monitoring needs. The monitoring framework will be integrated within the future LUCAS campaigns, and inform and contribute to the Soil Health law.

Co-develop a Soil Health Dashboard with the JRC

Support the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and EU Soil Observatory in development of a Soil Health Dashboard

Use open science principles

Use the EU open science principles to ensure that project data and protocols are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) and available, that publications are open source and that (intermediary) results of the project are actively made available to the stakeholders.

Ensure long-term impact

Focus on co-development, communication, dissemination and exploitation activities from the start of the project, to ensure that the outputs of the project are relevant, understandable and applicable. Develop an exploitation plan with public and private partners to ensure long-term impact.

The Work Packages

1. Co-development, Dissemination, Exploitation

2. Developing an integrative soil health monitoring framework

3. Data Management

4. Evaluating soil health through indicator measurements

5. Monitoring, Reporting and Verification

6. Delivering on Soil Health from local to European scale

7. Project Management

Stakeholders

Local stakeholder Discussing practices which are relevant for local systems and measurements which are applicable.
Landscape stakeholder Role in management of systems (agriculture, forestry, urban). What goals are important and how to monitor the transition.
Regional stakeholder Role in governance of systems (agriculture, forestry, urban). What goals are important and how to monitor the transition.
Interested Citizen and Citizen Scientist Raising “Soil literacy”, awareness and social appreciation; co-development of citizen scientist tools, receiving
feedback on tools
Land Managers To create a Serious Game to help stakeholders in the decision making process regarding soil health
Landscape MRV user Implementation of indicator framework – comparison to
existing MRV procedures at Landscape scale.
National MRV users Implementation of indicator framework – comparison to existing MRV procedures at National scale.
European MRV users Implementation of indicator framework – comparison to existing MRV procedures at European scale.
Global MRV users Global policy assessment and how to align to the other scales for monitoring.
MRV actors and land owner Initiatives to adopt and implement lasting soil health indicator strategy