On 21-22 June 2021, the Horizon 2020 project, SOILGUARD, held its inaugural meeting online, kicking off its project activities. Twenty-five transdisciplinary project partners from seventeen countries came together to share the project goals, expectations and results to be achieved during the next four years. Roles and responsibilities to be carried out were explained by Leitat, project coordinator, and the leaders of the different work packages.
The aim of SOILGUARD is to boost the sustainable use of soil biodiversity to protect soil multifunctionality and increase economic, social and environmental wellbeing. This will be achieved by co-creating strong evidence of the links between soil management, soil biodiversity, soil multifunctionality and human wellbeing across biogeographical regions.
This evidence will be obtained by means of a holistic ground-breaking Soil Biodiversity and Wellbeing Framework. "The AIT will investigate the interactions between microorganisms and plants," explains Markus Gorfer, expert in fungal ecology at the AIT Center for Health & Bioresources.
SOILGUARD will assess soil biodiversity status and its contribution to the delivery and value of soil-mediated ecosystem services (ES) in relation to threats i.e. land degradation, unsustainable soil management and climate change. The evidence will be used to:
- quantify the environmental, economic, and social benefits of SSM and soil biodiversity,
- increase the power to forecast soil biodiversity responses to ongoing and projected challenges, and
- cascading effects on soil-mediated ES and human wellbeing,
- inform national, EU and global policy and conservation frameworks
- to mainstream and support SSM practices implementation.
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation programme under the Grant Agreement no. 101000371.
All Information can be found at: https://www.europeanlandowners.org/projects/soilguard and https://www.europeanlandowners.org/projects/soilguard