Citizens leading a soil sample collection effort across Scotland

The Importance of Soil

Soil is a vital, fragile and non-renewable resource that supports life on Earth, which needs to be carefully managed as it serves as the foundation of our food systems. It is also the foundation for agricultures, forests, cultural heritage and our landscapes. It can take hundreds of years for one centimetre of soil to form, but all can be lost in just a single rainstorm or a pollution incident. Soil degradation poses a major threat and can have severe consequences for our planet. Unfortunately, it is estimated that between 60-70% of soil across the European Union are unhealthy. The James Hutton Institute is taking part in a soil citizen science project, which aims to map the state of soil across Scotland and Europe, and engage citizens in data collection, to ensure that we can safeguard this invaluable resource for future generations.

THE ECHO Project

The ECHO Project is one the many projects funded under the EU Mission Soil Deal For Europe. The European Union has identified several ‘Missions’ as key areas of research interests, one of which is ‘Cancer’ and another is ‘Healthy oceans, seas, coastal and inland water’ or ‘Climate-neutral and smart cities’. This indicates the level of importance that soil holds, at least from a research and funding perspective. The James Hutton Institute and other 15 partners, including 10 university and research organisation, 4 SMEs and 2 foundations, led by the Free University of Bolzano-Bolzen, based in 9 European countries, are working together on the ECHO Project, which is the most ambitious soil science project of its kind. The project aims to both increase soil literacy and map out the state of soil across Europe and Scotland, by collecting 16 500 soil samples and engaging 16 500 citizens in doing so.

Citizen science can unleash the power of the people

Citizen Science

To achieve this ambitious goal of collecting 16 500 soil samples across Europe and 1200 samples in Scotland, the project is utilising citizen science. Citizen science is a frequently used scientific method in projects that necessitate a large sample collection. Often citizens are called to action to help map out the state of biodiversity and pay attention what kind of birds they can see in specific habitats, or help report visible pollution in rivers.

The ECHO Project’s citizen science efforts are structured in a way, where firstly, we recruit ECHO Ambassadors. These are especially involved citizens, who are willing to engage their community and distribute soil sampling kits among that community. Hutton have run 8 workshops thus far, and successfully recruited over 60 ECHO Ambassadors. These include soil health specialists, teachers, farmers, NGO representatives, artists, and more. These Ambassadors are then tasked with helping us manage the logistics of soil sample distributing to other citizens, so that we can reach 1200 samples.

As we start data collection and distributing soil sampling kits, we are following three project objectives. Firstly, we want to engage citizens and increase their knowledge and interest in soil and motivate them to get involved in soil protection and restoration. Secondly, we want to empower citizens by making them an integral part of the project, without their data collection efforts, we cannot complete the project. And thirdly, we want to enable citizens to actively take part in decision-making on soil issues based on the new knowledge they will acquire during the project.

The kits we provide to citizens have several components and detailed instructions. The project is also developing and app where citizen scientists will register and log in their soil sample details. See picture of sampling kit:

ECHOREPO

One of the long-term goals of the ECHO project, is to establish an online open access repository with all the soil data collected during the span of the project called ECHOREPO. This online resource will enable for the citizen science data collected to be available to the citizen scientists themselves, as well as policy makers, farmer, landowners and other data end-users. Opening up this resource containing the results of our large-scale soil sampling effort will provide valuable information about the state of soil and will help citizens make better information decisions about land use and conservation. We also hope that the data we will collect in the span of the project will help fill gaps in already existing soil databases, particularly when it comes to urban soils, which are largely under-researched.

What’s next?

In the next coming months, we will be assembling soil sampling kits and make them ready for distribution to our ECHO Ambassadors who will then in turn distribute them among their community. One of the project partners is also finishing the ECHO App, which is a necessary component for the data collection. And lastly, we are looking forward to collecting and analysing the soil samples at The James Hutton Institute labs. This will also include DNA analysis of the soil and analysing the fungi and biodiversity present in the soil.

Project Contact details

If you find this project interesting and you’d like to take part as a citizen scientist, please contact echo.soil@hutton.ac.uk, or fill out form on our website Become an ECHO Ambassador – Echo Soil.

Funding disclosure:

ECHO is a Research and Innovation Action co-funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme, and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). It will last 4 years – from June 2023 to May 2027