The Basque Country anticipates future EU soil legislation with a pioneering monitoring network
NEIKER, in collaboration with the OpenGeoHub Foundation, is promoting the design of a network with 400 control points that incorporates DNA analysis techniques to assess biodiversity, surpassing traditional chemical standards.
Soil is an essential resource for food production, biodiversity conservation and the regulation of environmental processes such as the carbon cycle and water storage. However, in Europe, its health is showing signs of deterioration due to erosion, loss of organic matter, diffuse pollution and the intensification of certain uses. Added to this is the lack of consistent and comparable information between regions, which makes it difficult to accurately assess the magnitude of these problems and guide effective sustainable management policies.
In response to this need, the Council of the European Union (EU) has established a common regulatory framework for assessing soil health in all Member States. The new Soil Monitoring Directive defines how sampling points should be selected, which descriptors should be measured and which methodology should be applied to obtain comparable data at European level, with the aim of moving towards a monitoring system capable of providing reliable diagnoses to ensure that all soil ecosystems in the EU are in good health by 2050.
To respond to this challenge and ascertain the actual situation in the Basque Country without waiting for the official transposition of the regulation, NEIKER has taken the initiative by already applying the methodological framework proposed by Brussels. The design of this monitoring network, carried out in 2024 in collaboration with the OpenGeoHub Foundation, has enabled the centre to identify 400 strategically distributed points to capture the regional variability of the Basque Country based on climatic, edaphic and landscape variables.
‘As a first step in this rollout, a pilot sampling was carried out this autumn at 60 points on farmland, mainly cereal crops, vineyards and orchards, validating the methodology in the field thanks to the collaboration of the landowners,’ explains Pilar Merino, head of NEIKER’s Natural Resources Conservation Department.
