#healthysoil – a priceless and living resource
Check what you know about soil! We invite you to check your knowledge on soil in soil quizzes prepared by the Horizon Europe Mission Board for Soil Health and Food.
Most of the world's food is produced on good quality soils. Soil is a resource extremely valuable, diverse and full of life. Professor Julian Aleksandrowicz said "You are what you eat" and it is just the soil that gives us food. However, this element of the biosphere, which is crucial for humans and all animal and plant species living on land or in water, is being systematically reduced and destroyed. Intensive land use can significantly and - in many ways - negatively affect the soil and its functions, e.g. by sealing, erosion, compaction, deposition of contaminants, disturbance of water relations, soil depletion, or reduction of biodiversity.
Mission Board for Soil Health and Food, one of five missions preparing the background for the Horizon Europe Framework Programme for 2021-2027, has developed educational materials on soils in the form of quizzes.
Responsibility for protecting these necessary resources lies with us all as consumers, farmers and food producers, but also with local, national, European and global politicians and decision-makers - emphasises Dr. Marta Pogrzeba, Prof. of IETU, who represents Poland in the Horizon Europe Mission Board.
Land cover in Europe
According to Copernicus Corine Land Cover classification
Source: EEA Signals 2019
The top layer of soil is only 20-30 cm thick. It contains a large amount of organic carbon and is, therefore, the most productive layer of the Earth's surface. The formation of one centimetre of the topsoil is a process lasting from several hundred to several thousand years. Given this fact, this layer is not a renewable resource.
In the quiz we compare the Earth to an apple, the skin of which shows how thin the soil layer is. It must be noted that only 10-15% of the Earth's surface is good soil - says Prof. M. Pogrzeba - Educating the public about the role and importance of soils is necessary to better understand issues related to maintaining their acreage and improving their quality. That is why land recycling, reuse and changing a land use pattern are so important.
Check what you know about soil!
Apple - soil game
"How much do you know about soil" - quiz
Dr. Marta Pogrzeba, Prof. of IETU represents Poland in the Horizon Europe Mission Board for Soil Health and Food. She is an expert of the EIP AGRI Focus Group on Protecting Agricultural Soils from Contamination, as well as the Focus Group - Sustainable Industrial Crops in Europe.
Since 2010 she has been the Head of the Remediation Team carrying out research projects in the field of phytoremediation of heavy metal contaminated soils (phytoextraction, phytostabilisation), the use of energy crops in soil remediation processes, assessment of phytotoxicity of plant growth substrates, development of plant covers on contaminated sites, and development of artificial soil from waste materials.