The objective of AI4SoilHealth is to co-design, create and maintain an open access European-wide digital infrastructure, compiled using state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods combined with new and deep soil health understanding and measures. The AI-based data infrastructure functions as a Digital Twin to the real-World biophysical system, forming a Soil Digital Twin. This can be used for assessing and continuously monitoring Soil Health metrics by land use and/or management parcel, supporting the Commission's objective of transitioning towards healthy soils by 2030. The project is divided into seven (7) work-packages including: (WP2) Policy and stakeholder engagement - networking and synchronizing with EU and national programs, (WP3) Soil health methodology and standards - developing/testing methodology to be used by WPs 4-6, (WP4) Soil health in-situ monitoring tools and data - developing field and laboratory solutions for Observations & Measurements, (WP5) Harmonised EU-wide soil monitoring services - developing the final suite of tools, data and services, (WP6) Multi-actor engagement pilots - organizing field-works and collect users' feedback, (WP7) Soil literacy, capacity building and communication - organizing public campaigns and producing educational materials. Key deliverables include: 1) Coherent Soil Health Index methodology, 2) Rapid Soil Health Assessment Toolbox, 3) AI4SoilHealth Data Cube for Europe, 4) Soil-Health-Soil-Degradation-Monitor, and 5) AI4SoilHealth API and Mobile phone App. Produced tools will be exposed to target-users (including farmer associations in >10 countries), so their feedback is used to improve design/functionality. Produced high-resolution pan-European datasets will be distributed under an Open Data license, allowing easy access by development communities. AI4SoilHealth will provide an effective Soil Health Index certification system to support landowners and policy makers under the new Green Deal for Europe. Keywords: Biogeochemistry, biogeochemical cycles, environmental chemistry, Earth observations from space/remote sensing, Environment, resources and sustainability, Environmental monitoring systems, Terrestrial ecology, land cover change.

Clouds play a major role in regulating Earth's radiation budget. Their radiative properties and lifetime are modulated by ice nucleating particles (INPs). Despite being very rare, INPs active at or above -10 °C (INP-10) can have significant effects on cloud development when initial ice formation is followed by ice multiplication, such as rime splintering. An enhanced number concentration of INP-10 sometimes coincides with rainfall, albeit other aerosol particles of similar size decrease during rain. This contrast poses a limit on parametrising INP-10 as a function of the more easily measurable aerosol number concentration. It also calls for investigating more closely the feedback between rainfall and INP-10. To advance in this field of research, it is necessary to quantify the flux of INP-10 from land surfaces under dry and rainy conditions. Relevant here is the flux from lowlands to near an altitude where first ice may form in clouds. In this project we will determine this flux by measuring INP-10 with high precision and an hourly time resolution at the High Altitude Research Station Jungfraujoch on days when conditions change from free tropospheric conditions to a substantial planetary boundary layer influence. Radon measurements ongoing in the context of another project will, together with Lagrangian particle dispersion modelling, allow to quantify by radon mass balance approach the INP-10 flux from dry and rainfall-affected source regions. Our main objective is to quantitatively understand the effect of rainfall on INP-10 flux to an extent at which it can be meaningfully coupled to simulations of aerosolcloud interactions.

After more than fifty years of intensive agriculture application, the environmental situation for many olive groves across the Mediterranean Region is quite dramatic in terms of land degradation, biodiversity impoverishment, functionality loss, which may have already impacted on the quality and safety of olive oil, one of the most important commodities produced in Europe. Through the implementation of a series of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary WPs, this project will perform the first rigorous diagnostic of the environmental situation of olive groves soils at a broad scale, considering the most important areas of olive production at the Mediterranean Region and its relationships to olive oil quality. Soil O-live aims (i) to analyze the impact of pollution and land degradation on soils from olive groves in terms of multi-biodiversity, ecological function at different levels of organization and scales; (ii) to investigate the relationship of soil health status with quality and safety of olive oil; (iii) to implement effective soil amendments and ecological restoration practices that promote manifest soil biodiversity and functionality enhancements in permanent Mediterranean olive orchards across its native range of distribution, that should be translated to improvements in olive oil quality and safety; (iv) to define rigorous ecological thresholds that allow to implement future clear norms and regulations in order to design a novel certification for healthy soils in European olive orchards.

Artificial fallout radionuclides are found ubiquitously in the environment around the world and they provide the privileged marker candidates ("golden spikes") of the Anthropocene stratigraphic layers. The onset of their emissions coincided with the period of Great Acceleration that took place after World War II and that is characterised by an increase in soil degradation, which was often triggered by land use change. Particle-bound radiocesium and plutonium are widely used to date modern sediment archives and reconstruct soil redistribution rates during this period. However, although the fallout chronology is better constrained in the Northern Hemisphere, much less is known regarding the timing and the spatial distribution of their deposition in the Southern Hemisphere. The AVATAR project consortium will therefore fill this important knowledge gap through the compilation of all data available in the literature and in recently released declassified military archives. Then, it will conduct soil and sediment sampling in zones identified as data gaps based on the comprehensive literature survey. These soil and sediment samples (~2000 in total) will be analysed for cesium and plutonium to calculate their fallout radionuclide inventories and sources (i.e. the proportion of global fallout due to USSR and USA atmospheric nuclear bomb tests with a peak in 1963 vs. the proportion of fallout due to French nuclear tests conducted between 1966 and 1974 in the South Pacific) and to improve sediment core dating. Spatial analyses will be conducted to provide the first reference map of radiocesium and plutonium fallout in the southern hemisphere. Then, this improved fallout distribution knowledge will be used to reconstruct soil redistribution during the Anthropocene through an innovative combination of conversion and erosion models in two pilot large river basins of the southern hemisphere. Importantly, the AVATAR project will propose original methods to validate the spatial and the temporal distribution of sediment transfer reconstructions in these large river basins during the Anthropocene. Finally, the compiled databases and maps will be shared with a wide community including atmosphere scientists, climatologists, radio-toxicologists and soil scientists. A participative network to update and upgrade a fallout radionuclide database at the global scale will also be launched at the end of the project.

Linking soil hydraulic properties with soil erosion estimations Saturated hydraulic conductivity Ks can be used to describe water movement under saturated conditions in the soils. It differentiates the amount of water infiltrating into the soil and the amount of water flowing over the surface as runoff. Soils with small values of hydraulic conductivity have low infiltration rates and during intense rains, water run-off will lead to consequent soil losses and surface transport of colloids, nutrients, and microbes, which can then cause problems of eutrophication and pollution of downstream areas (Dexter et al., 2004). Objectives: 1. To locate the hotspots with low saturated hydraulic conductivity and high soil erosion 2. To combine saturated hydraulic conductivity ( Gupta et al, 2021 ) and soil erosion ( Pasquale et al., 2017 ) spatial maps to modify risk classe s

Spatial soil maps are essential for monitoring, management, and conservation. Maps of soil properties are available from regional to global scales, with global maps being urgently needed for global modelling and management endeavours (from soil degradation to climate change modelling and assessments). Objectives: 1. To link soil organic carbon, soil texture, nitrogen, and phosphorus to various remote sensing parameters (vegetation, topography, climate) and using machine learning algorithm. 2. To generate high resolution (20-30 m) spatial response and uncertainty maps of Switzerland 3. To compare the accuracy with different available maps

Accelerated soil erosion is a worldwide threat to soil health. Understanding soil and sediment behaviour through sediment source apportionment allows for monitoring and detection of high sediment delivery locations. The Bayesian mixing model MixSIAR with compound-specific stable isotope tracers is increasingly being used to estimate land-use specific sediment source apportionment. The aim of this topic is to examine compound specific isotopic tracer selection in sediment source apportionment using innovative methodologies and determine which tracers improve model performance. Furthermore, this study investigates the influence of past agriculture on sediment deposit rates using new compound specific isotopic tracers and sediment cores. Understanding and exploring sediment dynamics through the application of mixing models and compound specific isotope biomarkers. Specific interests include: Tracer selection and validation in Bayesian mixing models, the degradation and conservatives of isotopic biomarkers, and the historic impact of agriculture on soil erosion in flood plains

Das Projekt dient vorrangig dazu, den Bund und die Kantone bei der Beurteilung von Risiken, Ausmass und zeitlichen Entwicklungen von Bodenschäden zu unterstützen, indem flächenhafte Kartierungen und Langzeitbeobachtungen ermöglicht werden.

Mercury (Hg) is a global pollutant of great concern for human and ecosystem health. The UNEP Minamata Convention on Hg aims to curb global anthropogenic Hg emissions, yet has to balance economic and environmental interests. Major knowledge gaps on the role of terrestrial surfaces in the complex global Hg cycling however hamper a science-based assessment of Hg emission reduction scenarios. This in turn undermines the effectiveness of the UNEP Minamata Convention and calls for new scientific approaches to address this prevailing uncertainty associated with terrestrial Hg cycling.The current paradigm suggests that anthropogenic gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) emissions are oxidized in the atmosphere to reactive HgII forms before depositing through rain, snow and dust to Earth surfaces. Hg stable isotope fingerprint studies however revealed that Hg in continental vegetation and soils corresponds to the isotopic fingerprints of GEM rather than HgII in precipitation. There is now increasing evidence that GEM uptake by vegetation represents a massive, overlooked deposition pathway. The latter would imply that vegetation as a GEM pump could significantly affect the GEM lifetime in the atmosphere and change our understanding of global atmospheric Hg cycling. The goal of this project is to resolve this apparent paradox and better understand the importance of GEM uptake by vegetation relative to HgII deposition by rain and snowfall.The short-term balance between Hg deposition and (re)-emission processes governs the seasonal GEM variations. In Europe, GEM concentrations peak in wintertime and are generally attributed to higher anthropogenic GEM emissions from fossil fuel burning in winter. This conclusion is however unconstrained and seasonal variations in GEM deposition (e.g. less plant uptake during the winter) or oxidation processes have been suggested as alternative explanations. This project aims to assess the impact of GEM uptake by vegetation on global Hg cycling and quantify this unconstrained flux to terrestrial ecosystems using a combination of novel stable Hg isotope analysis, remote sensing data and modeling approaches. The objectives are to:(1)Understand the processes controlling seasonal GEM variation by investigating the isotopic fingerprint of GEM at six European sites to differentiate between the role of foliar GEM uptake and primary anthropogenic GEM emissions.(2)Quantify the flux of GEM uptake by foliage and assess its relevance for total Hg deposition in comparison to HgII wet deposition for continental Europe by analyzing seasonal evolution and spatial variability of the Hg pool in foliage at 10 sites along a transect through Europe.(3)Assess the magnitude of the foliar GEM uptake flux for Europe by extrapolating the site-based measurements to a continental scale using satelite-based remote sensing data on vegetation coverage.(4)Improve the parameterization of foliar GEM uptake in global mercury models and to quantify the global foliar GEM uptake flux with a global isotope mass balance. This project will provide for the first time quantitative insights on the seasonality of GEM uptake by vegetation on a continental and global scale. The results will lead to a substantial reduction of current uncertainties associated with terrestrial Hg fluxes and will improve the implementation of the Minamata convention.

Large percentages of peatlands in Europe have been degraded during the last centuries due to intensive agricultural or forestry usage resulting in a major loss of related ecosystems functions such as biodiversity, natural habitat, water cycle regulation, recreational values and last but not least carbon storage. While landscape managers seek to restore peatlands in the recent years they lack feasible monitoring tools to prove successful restoration. Here we propose to develop a set of biogeochemical and modelling tools to assess peatland restoration including a verification of net carbon storage. A combination of bulk isotope depth profiles, biomarker concentrations, soil chemical characteristics (molecular compound information, ash content, bulk density, C/N ratio, von Post humification degree, 13C NMR and IR spectroscopy) and radiocarbon data will be used to assess transformation degree and net carbon gain or loss of selected peat lands. Biogeochemical information will be used to develop a peatland model to test assumptions on isotope, molecular compound and biomarker dynamics. As such our overall aim is to develop work, cost and staff effective monitoring tools (bulk isotope data, soil chemical parameters) which will be verified in the proposed study as suitable indicators by sophisticated state-of-knowledge biogeochemical information (biomarker concentrations, molecular compounds, radiocarbon data, peat model development). Selected study sites will be in Finland, Southern Germany and Switzerland, where we already gathered experience and data from the antecedent project "Stable Carbon indicators of soil degeneration" (SNF project no. 200021-137569) and will profit from established collaborations on the long-term monitoring sites.