DG AGRI is currently supporting under Horizon 2020 an European Joint Programming Initiative (JPI) on agricultural soil management to overcome current fragmentation in national research programmes and unleash the potential of agricultural soils to contribute to climate change mitigation/adaptatio...
The European Commission launched a soil assessment component to the periodic LUCAS Land Use/Land Cover Area Frame Survey in 2009. Composite soil samples from 0-20-cm depth were taken, air-dried and sieved to 2 mm in order to analyse physical and chemical parameters of topsoil in 25 Member States...
In 2015 topsoil samples were collected in all 28 Member States of the European Union under the Soil module of the LUCAS survey. Previous surveys were performed in 2009 and 2012, but with restricted coverage. All soil samples were analysed by a central laboratory using standard methods. The resul...
The European Soil Database (ESDB) of the European Commission Joint Research Centre provides the most detailed and comprehensive set of data for soil properties with pan-European coverage. However, using the ESDB soil properties in combination with spatial applications is hampered by the structur...
For the first time ever, the Soil Atlas of Africa collects vital information on African soils and highlights the importance of this non-renewable resource. With its stunning full colour maps and illustrations, it explains in a comprehensible and visually appealing way the diversity of soil acros...
In 2009, the European Commission extended the periodic Land Use/Land Cover Area Frame Survey (LUCAS) to sample and analyse the main properties of topsoil in 23 Member States of the European Union (EU). This topsoil survey represents the first attempt to build a consistent spatial database of the...
What is soil biodiversity? How does it vary in space and time? What does it provide to society? What are the main threats to soil biodiversity? What can we do to preserve it? The first ever Global Soil Biodiversity Atlas uses informative texts, stunning photographs and striking maps to answer an...
