Consortium gets €12 million to develop framework for soil monitoring

English version: Diana Taborda

The Department of Life Sciences (DCV) of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra (FCTUC) is part of an international consortium that has been granted €12 million by the European Union in the scope of the project “Benchmarks”, which aims to develop, in 24 European Living Labs, a transparent, harmonised, cost-effective soil monitoring framework that allows multi-scale assessment by different users.

Starting in January 2023, this project "aims to work within the European mission "Soil Health and Food", which established the goal to ensure that 75% of soils in Europe are healthy or significantly improved by the beginning of the next decade," says Luís Cunha, Principal investigator of the project at the University of Coimbra. ““Benchmarks” is being developed in line with the European Green Deal and the Farm-to-Fork strategy, as well as the drafting of a new EU law on soil health protection," adds Cunha.

“Benchmarks” will provide indicators that require a multidisciplinary methodology, using methods focused on the physical and chemical properties of soil, as well as biology and biochemistry. The multi-scale focus also requires the inclusion of methods from molecular biology to remote sensing methods, as well as geographic information systems (GIS).

This Horizon 2020 5-year-project involves around 30 European institutions, including Portugal, Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and Germany, “which translates into a wide cultural and strong multi-disciplinary diversity”, highlights the FCTUC researcher.