How citizen science is helping to bring soil health into view
When we walk through a park, across the countryside, or even through our own garden, we tend to see soil simply as “dirt” — something inert beneath our feet. In reality, however, soil is a living, dynamic and highly complex structure. It is also a non-renewable resource on a human timescale, since forming 1 cm of soil can take up to 1,000 years, and a single handful of healthy soil can hold more living organisms than there are people on the entire planet. Unfortunately, this vital resource is under unprecedented pressure from intensive agriculture, accelerated urbanisation and climate change (Powlson et al. 2011; IPCC 2023; Prăvălie et al. 2024).
To tackle this silent degradation crisis, citizen science initiatives widen the network of people contributing to research by involving members of the general public, beyond those belonging to academia. In this way, participants provide researchers with a greater volume of experimental data and resources, raise new questions, and co-create a new scientific culture. While contributing value, citizens also gain new knowledge and skills and develop a deeper understanding of scientific work. As a result, interactions between science, society and public policy improve, leading to more democratic research and better-informed decision-making (Serrano et al., 2014).
That acquisition of new knowledge by participants in these initiatives is part of what we call “literacy” — in this case, soil literacy. Most of us barely know what characterises a healthy soil or why it should matter to us, and it is important for citizens to be informed and engaged in order to drive the policies and habit changes needed to protect it. We also face a scientific challenge: we don’t have enough data. Although the European Union has excellent official monitoring tools, such as the LUCAS project (Orgiazzi et al. 2018), these have limits in terms of the frequency and number of soil sampling points. On both fronts, citizen science comes in as a collective action: it makes it possible to build literacy and gather data at a spatial and temporal scale that would be difficult for scientists to achieve on their own.
Ibercivis’s recently published progress: keys to knowledge generation, co-creation and citizen participation in soil science
A scientific article recently published by our colleague Alba Peiro together with the ECHO project team, titled “Towards Healthier Soils: Insights for Knowledge Building, Co-Creation and Citizen Engagement in Soil Science,” in the journal European Journal of Soil Science, shares the lessons learned from designing, launching and running the first nine citizen science initiatives of the project (in Germany, Scotland, Spain, Finland, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Romania).
In this article, we explain the importance of starting by designing a precise yet simple soil sampling methodology that allows anyone — from a farmer to a secondary school student — to assess soil quality with the same rigour as the scientific community. To do this, we reviewed previous and current projects similar to ours, which allowed us to build the foundations of our methodology on their lessons learned. We identified 91 existing projects worldwide, of which we analysed 48, ultimately selecting the 17 best methodologies that met five essential requirements: simplicity, low cost, temporal and spatial applicability, replicability and data reliability. The result was the design of a sampling methodology combining both field observations through a simple, straightforward protocol and the collection of samples for analysis in top-level scientific laboratories.
The launch of the initiatives began in May 2024 with a call inviting interested people to start signing up for ECHO. The aforementioned article details the 10 co-creation workshops held with 261 people from various countries to refine the designed methodology, the soil sampling kit, and the activities to be carried out within the initiatives themselves. In these virtual and in-person sessions, participants tested the preliminary version of the kits and gave critical feedback using interactive visual tools to prioritise needs.
The response gathered in these workshops is also included in the article, as it proved highly revealing: 33% said their main motivation for joining was to improve their practical skills, 25% wanted to expand their scientific knowledge, and 21% wanted to connect with networks of people interested in the environment. In addition, they rated the materials as “very easy to use” (14%), “practical” (11%) and “clear” (9%). Thanks to their suggestions and constructive criticism, we were able to refine the final design of the ECHO materials.
The main outcome was a refined sampling kit that makes it possible to assess the biological, physical and chemical soil quality indicators (such as biodiversity, structure, pH, etc.) proposed by the EU’s Soil Mission. It includes: a detailed field protocol manual translated into several languages, protective gloves, a metal garden spade for preparing the ground, a wooden spoon, a tube of distilled water and pH paper strips for measuring acidity on site, a tube with DNA preservation solution to capture the invisible life of the soil, and biodegradable sampling bags fitted with a unique QR code to ensure each sample can be tracked. All of this equipment is complemented by a mobile app (available for Android and iOS) that guides users step by step through recording field notes and sending results directly to the project’s open repository, ECHOREPO.
In citizen science we also try to build community. The article we have published shows how, in order to coordinate a large European project like ours, it is essential to have intermediate figures between the team and local communities and activities, such as the ECHO ambassadors. As of April 2026, 466 ambassadors had actively joined the network. These people have been responsible for locally distributing more than 9,800 kits, answering questions in the field, organising local workshops and joint sampling days, and sending soil samples back to the project’s laboratories in Italy. In turn, these people have benefited from taking part in the network, gaining access to all the materials and the opportunity to run activities within the project’s framework in their own communities — many of which were already well established before joining the project and were already engaged with environmental issues related to soil. Public reception has also been very positive: by April 2026, more than 9,700 people had attended outreach sessions and informational talks, and more than 6,000 had already taken part directly in soil sampling days.
The article includes a descriptive analysis of ambassador and community participation to date. Among the main citizen groups the project has sought to reach are agricultural and land management communities, education communities, civil society, local communities, scientific bodies and academic institutions, and NGOs. This analysis also revealed notable differences among the nine participating countries so far. The most marked differences were found in the level of interest in engaging agricultural, land management and education communities, followed by local communities and the scientific/academic sector. By contrast, engagement with NGOs remained relatively consistent across the different initiatives. In terms of age ranges, most countries mainly engaged middle-aged adults (19 to 60 years old), while other age groups — such as children/adolescents (under 18) and older adults (over 60) — varied significantly depending on the country running the initiative. For example, Spain and Italy showed a wider range of interest groups and age ranges, while Poland showed the least diversity.
Building on all of this, our study also highlights the benefits of applying a hybrid model of citizen participation in scientific activity. In other words, there are projects in which almost everything is co-created with citizens, and others in which people only take part in sample collection. However, in ECHO we have found that an intermediate level of participation — co-creating only the materials and local activities while focusing on sample collection campaigns — ensures that initiatives are carried out on schedule, that citizens are engaged and trained, and that large-scale data collection is achieved.
Likewise, analysing similar projects has allowed us to identify patterns, for example regarding inclusivity and the adaptation of protocols to different citizen capabilities. Biological indicators turn out to be among the most suitable, as they require cheaper materials and simple visual observations. However, as is the case with ECHO, a comprehensive soil assessment also requires including chemical or physical indicators, whose methodologies are more rigorous and complex and require specialised laboratories and equipment that is difficult to decentralise.
Our article concludes by highlighting the tasks that remain and the positive aspects seen to date. We recognise that a critical step in sustaining citizen participation is ensuring that sampling results — and especially laboratory analysis results — are returned to citizens in interpretable and accessible formats through the ECHOREPO platform. This article also presents the initial phase of the project, and should therefore not be considered a definitive assessment of its long-term impact. We acknowledge the existence of participation biases typical of citizen science, such as volunteer bias (participation skewed towards people already sensitised to the issue), geographic biases, and the digital or socioeconomic divide. On the other hand, we are also contributing to soil monitoring across Europe. Our main contribution is the design of a single participatory protocol that integrates the eight soil health indicators proposed by the Soil Mission. Rather than replacing other official European monitoring systems, the observations generated by ECHO’s citizens complement them, providing greater spatial density over a shorter time span.
The project is showing that soil must stop being a forgotten element, and that protecting it requires reconnecting citizens with the land that sustains our lives. Citizen science contributes to this: it provides highly valuable scientific data and generates social impact by turning people into active, conscious participants in soil protection. By bringing scientific tools closer to citizens, ECHO fosters a new relationship with soil, based on knowledge, respect and a commitment to its conservation.
References
Froger, C., E. Tondini, D. Arrouays, et al. 2024. “Comparing LUCAS Soil and National Systems: Towards a Harmonized European Soil Monitoring Network.” Geoderma 449: 117027. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2024.117027
IPCC. 2023. “Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report.” In Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Core Writing Team), edited by H. Lee and J. Romero. IPCC. https://doi.org/10.59327/IPCC/AR6-9789291691647
Orgiazzi, A., C. Ballabio, P. Panagos, A. Jones, and O. Fernández-Ugalde. 2018. “LUCAS Soil, the Largest Expandable Soil Dataset for Europe: A Review.” European Journal of Soil Science 69: 140–153.
Powlson, D. S., P. J. Gregory, W. R. Whalley, et al. 2011. “Soil Management in Relation to Sustainable Agriculture and Ecosystem Services.” Food Policy 36: S72–S87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2010.11.025
Prăvălie, R., P. Borrelli, P. Panagos, et al. 2024. “A Unifying Modelling of Multiple Land Degradation Pathways in Europe.” Nature Communications 15: 3862. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-48252-x
Serrano, F., T. Holocher, B. Kieslinger, F. Sanz, and C. G. Silva. 2014. White Paper on Citizen Science for Europe. European Commission, Socientize Consortium. https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/system/files/ged/socientize_white_paper_on_citizen_science.pdf