Healthy soils are essential for sustainable food production, achieving climate neutrality and halting the loss of biodiversity. The European Commission turned the spotlights on these vital aspects of soils with the launch of the EU Soil Observatory (EUSO) in 2021 to support the European Green Deal. Also, the EU Soil Strategy for 2030 and the proposed Soil Monitoring Law marked a major milestone for soil protection. This article provides an overview of the functioning of the EUSO within this policy context. Through its activities, the EUSO supports an EU-wide soil monitoring system and provides policy support to a wide range of policy areas. Moreover, the EUSO monitors the state of soil health in the EU through the EUSO Soil Health Dashboard. This comprehensive and easy understandable tool shows, for the first time, where current scientific evidence converges to indicate areas in the EU likely to be affected by soil degradation. Furthermore, the EUSO supports soil research and innovation, enhances the capacity and functionality of the European Soil Data Centre and supports citizen engagements regarding soil matters. Overall, since 2021, the EUSO has successfully taken up its role to be the principal knowledge hub for soil information and data to underpin EU policy development and implementation. Also in the next years, EUSO will continue to provide data and knowledge to monitor, safeguard and restore soils in the EU. more ...

The topsoil Land Use and Cover Area frame Statistical survey (LUCAS) aims at collecting harmonised data about the state of soil health over the extent of European Union (EU). In the LUCAS 2018 survey, bulk density has been analysed for three depths, i.e., 0–10 cm = 6140 sites; 10–20 cm = 5684 sites and 20–30 cm =139 sites. The laboratory analysis and the assessment of the results conclude that the bulk density at 10–20 cm is 5–10% higher compared to 0–10 cm for all land uses except woodlands (20%). more ...

Here, we present and release the Global Rainfall Erosivity Database (GloREDa), a multi-source platform containing rainfall erosivity values for almost 4000 stations globally. The database was compiled through a global collaboration between a network of researchers, meteorological services and environmental organisations from 65 countries. GloREDa is the first open access database of rainfall erosivity (R-factor) based on hourly and sub-hourly rainfall records at a global scale. This database is now stored and accessible for download in the long-term European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC) repository of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. This will ensure the further development of the database with insertions of new records, maintenance of the data and provision of a helpdesk. more ...

The erosive force of rainfall (rainfall erosivity) is a major driver of soil, nutrient losses worldwide and an important input for soil erosion assessments models. Here, we present a comprehensive set of future erosivity projections at a 30 arc-second (∼1 km2) spatial scale using 19 downscaled General Circulation Models (GCMs) simulating three Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) for the periods 2041–2060 and 2061–2080. more ...