SUS-SOIL: sustainable Soil and Subsoil health promotion by implementing agroecological land use and management to enhance ecosystem services delivery for society is a four-year Horizon Europe funded research project.

The University of Sarajevo, including both the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences (https://ppf.unsa.ba/) and the Faculty of Forestry (https://www.sfsa.unsa.ba/web/), is participating as a partner in an SUS-SOIL international project.

The project’s kick-off meeting took place in Lugo, Spain, from October 2nd to 4th, 2024. Nearly 50 participants from over 10 countries gathered in Lugo, hosted by the project's coordinator, the University of Santiago de Compostela, to initiate discussions and collaboration on this important endeavor

This initiative will adopt a multidisciplinary approach that will develop a set of 15 Subsoil-Living Labs to inventory, analyse and benchmark different agroecology subsoil management (ASM) and land uses and their impacts on the subsoil spatial variations and dynamics to best combine ASM practices in rural and urban areas within a global regional context. The Livings Labs will be located in eight biogeographic regions: Boreal, Atlantic, Continental, Alpine, Pannonian, Mediterranean, Black Sea and Anatolian, across Europe and North Africa. Three relevant types of soil will be analysed in each Living Lab, in order to study soil degradation, long-term land use and develop farm idiotypes mixing different agroecology subsoil management practices as an alternative to conventional systems. SUS-SOIL results will be the start point to increase the awareness of land managers and public authorities to understand the subsoil threats and risks, support EU agroecological transformation tackling subsoils and increasing ecosystem services delivery, promoting water security and climate change mitigation of rural and urban ecosystems.

The consortium

The consortium involves 22 participants and 2 partner organisations. 11 Higher  Education Institutions (USC, UC, UNIPI, UTM, AUS, UNSA, UDC, UPM, CIHEAM-IAMB, CU, HU), 5 Research Organizations (ZALF, LIFEWATCH ERIC, NFC, LUKE, WETSUS), 3 Technical and Scientific Support Entities (VDT, VHC, PEFC), 2 Foundations and Associations (FEUGA, AFG), 2 Small/Public Companies (SENSEEN, A CARQUEIXA) and 1 Public Body (CARM) from 13 countries.

Coordinated by the USC the project will have a total cost of € 5,997,613.75, amount fully contributed by the European Union.

The SUS-SOIL consortium will work on developing a subsoil/soil monitoring database (S-DB) that can be interoperable with the LUCAS and ESDAC databases. Additionally, they will create a Subsoil Decision Support Tool (S-DST) that takes into account soil degradation and relevant business models, and propose a subsoil policy strategy framework to promote best practices for agroecological subsoil management.

Follow the project

SUS-SOIL (@SUSSOIL) / X : https://x.com/SUSSOIL 

SUS-SOIL / LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sus-soil 

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SUS-SOIL (@sus-soil) / YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sus-soil