Involving society in science, such as in the processes of soil formation and restoration, is essential to collect precious information and opinions from stakeholders on one side and give feedback to people about the outcomes of present and ongoing research on the other side. This involvement contributes to setting up more effective environmental actions and policy strategies, thanks to the more active participation of citizens and stakeholders in environmental decision-making. Using social media and social networking for transferring soil science to society is also a way to explore and reinforce if we want to bring society’s attention to soil science. This session aims to prepare a state-of-the-art and set up useful indications about (positive and negative) experiences, best practices, education tools, and projects about relationships between citizens and researchers in soil science. The suggested case studies may represent milestones in the difficult process of bridging the existing gaps between research and society. New investigation paths may be open, to face the current environmental issues of soil sciences in a highly dynamic age. Social Media and Networking Specific to Soil Science are encouraged to be presented as topics in this session.

All science has uncertainty. Global challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change illustrate that an effective dialogue between science and society requires clear communication of uncertainty. Responsible science communication conveys the challenges of managing uncertainty that is inherent in data, models and predictions, facilitating the society to understand the contexts where uncertainty emerges and enabling active participation in discussions. This session invites presentations by individuals and teams on communicating scientific uncertainty to non-expert audiences, addressing topics such as:

(1) Innovative and practical tools (e.g. from social or statistical research) for communicating uncertainty
(2) Pitfalls, challenges and solutions to communicating uncertainty with non-experts
(3) Communicating uncertainty in risk and crisis situations (e.g., natural hazards, climate change, public health crises)

Examples of research fitting into the categories above include a) new, creative ways to visualize different aspects of uncertainty, b) new frameworks to communicate the level of confidence associated with research, c) testing the effectiveness of existing tools and frameworks, such as the categories of “confidence” used in expert reports (e.g., IPCC), or d) research addressing the challenges of communicating high-uncertainty high-impact events.

This session encourages you to share your work and join a community of practice to inform and advance the effective communication of uncertainty in earth and space science.

Science communication includes the efforts of natural, physical and social scientists, communications professionals, and teams that communicate the process and values of science and scientific findings to non-specialist audiences outside of formal educational settings. The goals of science communication can include enhanced dialogue, understanding, awareness, enthusiasm, improving decision making, or influencing behaviors. Channels can include in-person interaction, online, social media, mass media, or other methods. This session invites presentations by individuals and teams on science communication practice, research, and reflection, addressing questions like:

What kind of communication efforts are you engaging in and how you are doing it?
How is social science informing understandings of audiences, strategies, or effects?
What are lessons learned from long-term communication efforts?

This session invites you to share your work and join a community of practice to inform and advance the effective communication of earth and space science.

Despite an ever-growing body of scientific literature outlining the need for radical transformations, efforts to address the climate and ecological crisis keep falling painfully short of what is necessary. At the same time, the situation continues to worsen as global warming gets dangerously close to 1.5 degrees. While the role of geoscientists has traditionally been to provide neutral information to be used by the public and policy makers, several studies pointed out that the main blockade to urgent climate action is not currently a lack of understanding or awareness or the situation (Oreskes, 2022, The trouble with the supply-side model of science) but rather opposition to necessary transformations by vested interests and powerful actors (Stoddard et al, 2021, Three decades of climate mitigation: Why haven’t we bent the emissions curve?). Our own institutions, universities, and research centers are also failing to rise to the challenge of this crisis and partly contribute to maintaining the status quo (Thierry et al, 2023, No research on a dead planet).
In that context, what role can geoscientists play to contribute to the urgent transformations necessary to mitigate the climate and ecological crisis? To explore this topic, we invite contributions that broadly address the following questions, whether from a theoretical perspective or through firsthand experiences:
– How to engage with civil society, stakeholders and policymakers to ensure that research findings lead to appropriate policies?
– How to assess and reduce the ecological footprint of scientific institutions?
– How to expand outreach and training efforts, in particular to enable under-represented actors, reduce power imbalances in climate politics, and oppose greenwashing?
– Should scientists engage in disruptive actions and civil disobedience to highlight the urgency of the situation, oppose destructive projects, and/or press on problematic actors?
– How can scientific institutions prevent reinforcing the status quo and instead contribute to radical transformations ?
In 2024, presentations considered: Outreach efforts towards policymakers or in rural areas, campaigns for universities to cut ties with the fossil industry, sustainable travel policies for researchers, strategies to debunk greenwashing, barriers to the public engagement of academics, and discussion about academic activism. We particularly encourage submissions presenting interdisciplinary work including social sciences.

The long-standing scientific debate on whether human-derived land use change (i.e., deforestation, opening new agricultural areas, mining activities, urbanization, etc.) or climate change, which plays a pivotal role in causing soil erosion, regulating water resources, and altering hydrological cycles in Southern Hemisphere remains unresolved in the existing literature.
This session, therefore, will examine the interconnected impacts of land use practices and climate change on soil erosion and water conservation in various landscapes in the Southern Hemisphere. It will focus on the distinct difficulties and prospects for sustainable environmental management on the regional or catchment scale. We encourage research contributions on the topics - but not solely limited to - listed below discussing their impacts on soil erosion and water conservation:
• Impacts of agricultural expansion
• Evaluation of soil conservation strategies in agroecosystems considering climate change
• Deforestation and its potential rebounds
• Aspects potential impacts of mining activities
• New techniques, methods, and strategies of remote sensing, modeling, and monitoring for mitigation strategies.
By addressing the intricate interactions of processes mentioned above, this session welcomes to a broader extent scientists, particularly early career scientists with their novel studies.

Soil erosion is one of the principal drivers of land degradation, with numerous onsite effects on soil availability and quality, and off-site impacts in freshwater environments. The environmental, economic and political impacts of land degradation motivate a comprehensive scientific understanding of the physical processes controlling soil detachment, transport and deposition at a range of spatial and temporal scales. This knowledge has high relevance when developing measurement and modelling techniques, and suggesting conservation strategies to farmers, land managers and policy makers.

This session will discuss the most recent scientific developments in soil erosion sciences and closely associated land degradation processes in agriculture, forest and rangelands. Spanning across multiple disciplines, this session will naturally integrate all driving forces of erosion (hydrological, aeolian, mechanical) focussing on water, wind, tillage and harvest (SLCH) erosion as well as the numerous anthropogenic factors which interact with these processes.

The following topics will form the areas of presentation and discussion:

• Measurements - by means of field studies or laboratory experiments (e.g. from interrill to gully erosion).

• Monitoring - short to long-term assessments, by means of local assessments or remote sensing techniques.

• Modelling approaches – innovative simulation techniques from plot to global scale, addressing current and future land condition and climate change drivers.

• Mitigation and restoration – to address on-site and off-site impacts on soils and water.

Our objective is to discuss soil erosion processes and their impacts, while exploring strategies which support stakeholders (farmers, land managers or policy makers) and ongoing initiatives such as the Soil Monitoring Law in the European Union, the target of land degradation neutrality by 2030, and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030).

Soil erosion is one of the main processes leading to land degradation in many locations worldwide. Soil erosion has numerous in-site and out-side impacts (e.g. alter soil fertility and the productivity of (agroforest)ecosystems; modify biogeochemical cycles and, therefore, impacts on climate change; sedimentation of reservoirs) affecting ecosystem services and human well-being. In an era marked by increasing global challenges (i.e. land use and climate changes), the need to understand soil erosion dynamics and for effective soil conservation strategies has never been more critical. This session aims to address innovative approaches for soil erosion assessment and effective soil conservation practices used worldwide. We welcome research including experimental and modelling studies addressing the following subjects:
- Explore the fundamental processes of soil erosion and the contributing factors, including natural forces and human activities;
- Use of technological innovations for monitoring soil erosion;
- Investigating the impact of changing climate patterns on soil erosion and the uncertainties involved;
- Innovative and sustainable soil conservation techniques and practices that can mitigate the effects of soil erosion;
- Present case studies from different regions and environments, highlighting successful soil conservation projects and initiatives;
- Collaborative approaches to develop integrated strategies for soil conservation;
- Discuss the role of policies and regulations in promoting soil conservation and sustainable land management.

Water erosion is one of the most widespread forms of soil degradation and agricultural productivity loss as well as a substantial driver in landscape evolution and morphogenesis.
In the context of global change, the erosion process is expected to intensify its action, mainly because of an increase in the frequency of extreme precipitation and localized events.
Furthermore, the anthropic action in changing land uses and increasing erosive crops can contribute to the aggravation of the phenomenon.
In this session is expected to collect contributions for discussing over the files:
1. Soil erosion modelling, especially as part of scenario analysis in various contexts. Such an approach has exponentially grown in the last decades becoming a current tool for exploring new horizons in erosion prediction.
It may include new data processing methodologies with local and global approaches to improve understanding of long-term behaviors and determine possible trajectories due to the impact of erosion factors such as climate and land-use change.
2. Erosion modelling and assessment based on alternative data such as remote and proximal sensing, fingerprinting of sediment sources, benchmarking, etc., over a wide range of scales and methods.
This is in response to the increased availability of observational data, especially from satellite, allowing detailed monitoring of the processes.

Soil-erosion models are increasingly popular within the scientific community. These models are often easy to use and enjoy a good reputation with stakeholders and policymakers. In particular, the new EU ‘soil deal for Europe’ is expected to be largely influenced by soil-erosion models and their estimates of how erosion can affect soil health. However, there is a dissonance between what we hope to achieve from modelling and (i) our knowledge of the conceptual and empirical limitations of soil-erosion models, and (ii) our inability to ascertain confidence in model predictions based on empirical measurements that are compatible with model structures. This dissonance has led to a reliability crisis that, left unchecked, risks eroding the credibility of the research field.
This session will foster a discussion on the way out of the reliability crisis by rethinking current challenges in erosion modelling and proposing alternatives to push the science forward. As such, we welcome a wide range of contributions, from critical perspectives to applied research. Specifically, we encourage contributions dealing with:
(i) new approaches to modelling soil erosion
(ii) novel approaches to collecting soil-erosion data
(iii) the use of novel field and/or remote sensing techniques to improve model parameterisation and evaluation
(iv) new or improved methods for model calibration and model testing – particularly approaches that increase model falsifiability and/or that report case studies of model invalidation (if you have “bad” results, we want to hear about it!)
(v) uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis
(vi) the use of erosion models to develop and test hypotheses about soil systems
(vii) translating (uncertain) modelled erosion rates into risk assessments for policymakers
In addition, we expressly encourage contributions that provide critical yet constructive perspectives on soil-erosion modelling and that will enrich the session discussion. We also welcome interdisciplinary contributions bridging the gap between mathematical modelling, sociology and philosophy of science, and policy making.

Peatland restoration for conservation purposes has been implemented for decades now, but recently the focus has been shifting towards a reconciliation of the production of biomass with ecological goals, especially the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Whilst peatland management in conservation-focussed projects increasingly has to be adapted to climate change. Management measures include, but are not limited to, productive use of wet peatlands (paludiculture), improved water management in conventional agriculture and innovative approaches in conservation-focused rewetting projects and dual-management for renewable energy production and peatland protection. We invite studies addressing all types of peatland management and their impacts on GHG exchange, ecosystem services and biodiversity. Work at all spatial scales from laboratory to global level addressing biogeochemical and biological aspects as well as experimental and modelling studies are welcome. Furthermore, we invite contributions addressing policy coherence and identifying policy instruments for initiating and implementing new management practices on organic soils. Implementation and efficiency of management practices depends not only on hydrogeology and climate but also on other regional factors. Therefore, we hope to host contributions from different geographical regions where peatlands are important including boreal, temperate and tropical peatlands.

To control catchment hydrology and morphology, and regulate water resources and forest and agricultural activities, channel control structures (such as check dams) and soil conservation techniques (e.g., terracing, mulching, afforestation) have been strategically used for several decades. Although research has underscored their vital role, several scientific aspects remain unexplored: i) suitable planning and design of restoration actions; ii) prediction of degradation and functioning over time; iii) quantification of the effectiveness of actions as a function of their desired purposes; iv) assessment of their effectiveness after extreme hydrological events. The lack of long-term monitoring studies makes this scientific objective complicated. However, remote sensing (RS) opens new horizons to monitor the evolution of catchment morphology and analyse past and current phenomena by exploiting multi-temporal surveys at different scales and open-source big data.
This session offers a platform for collaboration and discussion among soil scientists, hydrologists, geomorphologists, foresters and stakeholders, facilitating a dialogue on critical issues about planning, design, and management of torrent control works and soil conservation techniques at the catchment scale. Research about the following topics is welcome: i) innovative protocols and guidelines for planning and design; ii) emerging techniques for multi-temporal or real-time monitoring of effects exploiting RS; iii) standards for comprehensive analysis of structural and functioning conditions as well as impacts on natural dynamics of torrents and their catchments; iv) identification of new challenges (i.e., soil-bioengineering techniques and integration of living vegetation in check dam systems).
Early career scientists are encouraged to contribute to the session with original and advanced studies.

Despite ample literature, research is not exhaustive about the effects of soil conservation techniques in endangered agro-forest environments. This depends on the variability of the environmental conditions as well as on socio-economic factors. To contribute to filling this research gap, the session aims to propose monitoring activities in representative case studies, to setup clear guidelines about planning effective measures, and modelling exercises to set up reliable prediction tools, in order to protect watersheds from the impacts of flooding and erosion. Bringing together contributions from several contexts, dealing with detailed field experiences, validated models and effectiveness assessment methods, can help to support the restoration actions of land managers in degraded agro-forest environments or areas prone to degradation, and, at the same time, identify scientific literature gaps and future research directions.

Knowledge of the global distribution and character of soils is fundamental to our ability to effectively manage land resources and to interpret them as proxy archives in the evolution of landscapes. Such knowledge is obtained through systematic study of the spatiotemporal relationships of soils across the landscape and the mechanisms or processes responsible for their development. This session is dedicated to the advancement in our knowledge or understanding of emerging concepts in the fields of pedology, paleopedology, and/or soil geography. We welcome contributions from any geographic region, method of study, and conceptual approach. We particularly encourage submissions from ECS dedicated to fostering continued research in these fields.

Soil plays a fundamental role in characterising landscape and environment. In some cases, its properties may be unique and concomitant to specific contexts that hold heritages relevant for historical reasons to human development, such as particular environmental conditions, archaeological contexts or specific local activities marked by artefacts, erected monuments, ancient settlements, etc.
While information may be lost at sites, soil can retain information through its slow changes over time and reveal key evidence about specific environments and settings associated with human history.
Specific features may include characteristic soil types based on specific soil processes (e.g., erosion, hydromorphy, concretion formation, chemical degradation, etc.), properties such as OC, salinity, or conditions affected by particular genetic or morphologic conditions, such as buried soils, palaeosols, or other singular aspects.
The primary goal of this session is to gather case studies from diverse situations which highlight the role of soil as a marker or witness of remarkable environmental-human events in historic and prehistoric times. This session is designed to foster collaboration among soil scientists, geologists, and archaeologists.

The Quaternary Period (last 2.6 million years) is characterized by frequent and abrupt climate swings and rapid environmental change. Studying these changes requires accurate and precise dating methods that can be effectively applied to environmental archives. Different methods or a combination of various dating techniques can be used depending on the archive, time range, and research question. Varve counting and dendrochronology allow for the construction of high-resolution chronologies. In contrast, radiometric methods (radiocarbon, cosmogenic in-situ, U-Th) and luminescence dating provide independent anchors for chronologies that span longer timescales. We particularly welcome contributions that aim to (1) reduce, quantify, and express dating uncertainties in any dating method, including high-resolution radiocarbon approaches; (2) use established geochronological methods to answer new questions; (3) use new methods to address longstanding issues, or; (4) combine different chronometric techniques for improved results, including the analysis of chronological datasets with novel methods, e.g., Bayesian age-depth modeling. Applications may aim to understand long-term landscape evolution, quantify rates of geomorphological processes, or provide chronologies for records of climate change and anthropogenic effects on Earth's system.

Currently arid to sub-humid regions are home to >40% of the world’s population, and many prehistoric and historic cultures developed in these regions. Due to the high sensitivity of drylands to also small-scale environmental changes and anthropogenic activities, ongoing geomorphological processes under the intensified climatic and human pressure of the Anthropocene, but also the Late Quaternary geomorphological and paleoenvironmental evolution as recorded in sediment archives, are becoming increasingly relevant for geological, geomorphological, paleoenvironmental, paleoclimatic and geoarchaeological research. Dryland research is constantly boosted by methodological advances, and especially by emerging linkages with other climatic and geomorphic systems that allow using dryland areas as indicator-regions of global environmental changes.
This session aims to pool contributions dealing with past to recent geomorphological processes and environmental changes spanning the entire Quaternary until today, as well as with all types of sedimentary and morphological archives in dryland areas (dunes, loess, slope deposits, fluvial sediments, alluvial fans, lake and playa sediments, desert pavements, soils, palaeosols etc.) studied on different spatial and temporal scales. Besides case studies on archives and landscapes from individual regions and review studies, cross-disciplinary, methodical and conceptual contributions are especially welcome in this session, e.g., dealing with the special role of aeolian, fluvial, gravitational and biological processes in dryland environments and their preservation in deposits and landforms, the role of such processes for past and present societies, methods to obtain chronological frameworks and process rates, and emerging geo-technologies.

Human activity became a major player of global climatic and environmental change in the course of the late Quaternary, during the Anthropocene. Consequently, it is crucial to understand these changes through the study of former human-environmental interactions at different spatial and temporal scales. Documenting the diversity of human responses and adaptations to climate, landscapes, ecosystems, natural disasters and the changing natural resources availability in different regions of our planet, provides valuable opportunities to learn from the past. To do so, cross-disciplinary studies in Geoarchaeology offer a chance to better understand the archaeological records and landscapes in context of human culture and the hydroclimate-environment nexus over time. This session seeks related interdisciplinary papers and specific geoarchaeological case-studies that deploy various approaches and tools to address the reconstruction of former human-environmental interactions from the Palaeolithic period through the modern. Topics related to records of the Anthropocene from Earth and archaeological science perspectives are welcome. Furthermore, contributions may include (but are not limited to) insights about how people have coped with environmental disasters or abrupt changes in the past; defining sustainability thresholds for farming or resource exploitation; distinguishing the baseline natural and human contributions to environmental changes. Ultimately, we would like to understand how strategies of human resilience and innovation can inform our modern policies for addressing the challenges of the emerging Anthropocene, a time frame dominated by human modulation of surface geomorphological processes and hydroclimate.

Microorganisms are regarded as central drivers of carbon and nutrient cycling in soil. Still, the integration of microbial functions into biogeochemical processes often relies on simplified assumptions of cell physiology, with little insights into actual growth dynamics and interactions within microbial groups. Exploring microbial physiology in heterogeneous soil systems is methodologically challenging, though developing fields of –omics, microscopy, spectroscopy or isotope labeling reveal new insights on microbial dynamics directly in soil. Likewise, the integration of interdisciplinary knowledge from microbiological studies of the organisms itself adds important new perspectives. Such detailed understanding of microbial communities is crucial to understand biogeochemical processes across temporal and spatial scales.
In this session we invite research exploring microbial dynamics from individuals to complex communities with a focus on their impact on biogeochemical processes in soil. Contributions may provide a broad overview on latest developments in the field of soil microbial ecology, ranging from studies under controlled conditions with microbial isolates to analyses in soil using advanced analytical tools. We welcome studies working with whole soil microbial communities including their trophic interactions as well as those with a focus on chosen microbial groups, with a special aim to highlight understudied microbial groups like fungi and protists, as well as viruses. Biogeochemical processes may include classical studies of litter decomposition, nutrient dynamics and ecological stoichiometry, as well as carbon cycling including microbial residue formation (necromass, EPS..) as carbon inputs to soil. Experimental designs range from soil microhabitats at the micrometer scale to global analyses, and temporal ranges from hours to years covering different dynamics and processes.

Soil, as one of the main compartments of the terrestrial environment, is concentrated in a small part of the earth where plants and microorganisms play a major role in biogeochemical processes. The plant-soil interface, known as the rhizosphere, is a dynamic system where roots release organic substrates, forming rhizosphere gradients, contributing to biogeochemical processes, and modulating microbial habitats by crossing and penetrating aggregates, biopores, and detritus. Roots and associated microorganisms interact with heterogeneous soil environments that provide habitats for biota on various scales.
The challenging task, therefore, is to link the physical, chemical, and biological processes occurring at different scales (from nanometers to centimeters) at soil interfaces and to upscale these processes to the scale of the root system and the soil profile. This requires concerted efforts to combine methods from different disciplines such as plant genomics, imaging, soil physics, chemistry, and microbiology.
We welcome experimental and modeling studies that aim to reveal the functional biodiversity of microorganisms at soil interfaces, the uptake and release patterns by roots, soil structure modification by root growth (and vice versa), as well as the feedbacks between these processes. We also call for studies on emerging properties at soil interfaces, such as water acquisition, nutrient cycling, plant health, soil structure development, and the interactions among these processes.

Soil food webs are incredibly diverse, from viruses to rodents, or from arthropods to plant roots, but are too rarely approached in their entirety and many studies focus instead on a single group of interest. Soil food webs also largely determine soil biogeochemistry, but numerous studies treat the soil food web as a "black box" when considering the effects of e.g. warming or increased snow depth. Therefore soil food webs and their biogeochemical impacts remain poorly understood, particularly so in remote areas such as the Arctic. Moreover, Arctic soils and the fate of their enormous carbon and nitrogen stocks are a major uncertainty in our understanding of biogeochemical cycles in a warmer world. Drivers such as glaciations and complex biogeographical history have deeply affected soil food webs across the Arctic, and continue to have profound impacts on soil functioning and biogeochemistry.

We aim to gather studies linking descriptive approaches of the soil food web with their biogeochemical impacts, not only in the Arctic but also in other cold environments characterized by glaciation history and strong biogeographical limitations, i.e. the Antarctic and glacier forefronts in alpine regions. We expect that putting together cross-taxa and interdisciplinary approaches to the soil food web and its biogeochemical impacts across analogue ecosystems will lead to stimulating discussions and perhaps to the discovery of common patterns in the establishment and functionality of soil food webs in post-glacial environments.

Soil organisms are the key players in many ecological processes that support healthy soils. In agricultural systems, beneficial soil organisms support achieving high crop yields by suppressing soil-borne diseases, mineralizing organic substrates, and promoting a beneficial soil structure that balances the supply of air and water to plants. In natural systems, the beneficial soil organisms also play a pivotal role in nutrient transformations and plant-soil interactions, shaping the diversity of above-ground plant communities and supporting complex below-ground soil food webs, including higher trophic levels. We welcome empirical studies that relate soil organisms to such ecological processes or soil functions in both natural and agricultural studies. We equally value correlation-based research in large-scale field studies and mechanistic studies that link specific biotic groups to soil processes and functions.

Soil microbial communities are central regulators of carbon and nutrient cycling and thus strongly shape terrestrial ecosystems responses to climate change. It is therefore essential to study how microbial communities respond to diverse aspects of climate change, including gradual increases in temperature or atmospheric CO2 levels, as well as extreme weather events such as drying-rewetting cycles, heatwaves, or floods.
In this session, we invite empirical and theoretical studies that investigate the resistance, resilience, and adaptation of soil microbial community structure, activity, and function, in response to climatic disturbances. Studies on the response of multiple global change factors are particularly welcome. We also welcome research on the interactions between soil microorganisms, plants and fauna across temporal and spatial scales. We seek to establish a discussion platform to review the current state of the-art, identify knowledge gaps, exchange ideas, and address the emerging challenges of predicting the role of soil microbial communities in a changing world.

The term "biomass" includes the biodegradable portions of products, leftovers, and residual matter of biological origin resulting from agriculture, forestry, and affiliated sectors, which encompass fisheries, aquaculture, alongside the biodegradable constituents of industrial and municipal waste. Focusing on valorization and within a circular economy approach, converting biomass residues into high-value-added products yields substantial environmental and socioeconomic advantages, rendering it a subject of considerable scientific interest. Thus, thermochemical conversion presents a promising avenue for harnessing waste biomass to produce valuable products. Hydrothermal carbonization and pyrolysis convert biomass into hydrochars and pyrochars, carbon-rich solid products that can be applied as a soil amendment to enhance or restore soil functions and fertility, potentially resulting in an increase in microbial abundance, activity and quality and/or enhanced crop production. However, both the production of these carbons, the study of their physical and chemical properties, and their potential impact on the soil-plant-microorganism system require further investigation by the scientific community.
Researchers interested in these topics are cordially invited to take part, and we especially encourage contributions in the following domains:
- Study of the impact of organic amendments on soil microbial quality and/or quantity.
- Effect of char application on plant growth, production, and productivity
- Impact of the amendments on the soil-plant-microorganism system, as a complete and interconnected system, addressing the results at both the local and holistic levels.
- Research on agricultural and environmental applications

Soil biodiversity is essential for ecosystem functioning, supporting nutrient cycling, carbon storage, and primary productivity. In the last decade, the focus on soil biodiversity has increased, but linkages with ecosystem functioning remain scarce. By focusing on natural ecosystems, we can better understand ecological processes supporting ecosystem functioning and set a reference point for conservation efforts. In this session, we will discuss the latest findings on soil biodiversity in natural ecosystems and their functional roles.
We seek to showcase research that describes soil biodiversity, from microbes to macrofauna, in natural ecosystems such as grasslands and forests and explores potential linkages with ecosystem functioning. We also want to consider temporal dynamics and responses of soil biodiversity to global changes. We particularly encourage contributions from early-career researchers.

Soil biogeochemistry is driven by interlaced functions of diverse microorganisms. Understanding the connections between microbial functions and soil processes has been proven difficult due to the complexity of the soil ecosystem. Both experimental and numerical/mathematical models are needed in order to understand, upscale, and predict the effect these functions have on processes. Therefore, while their aesthetic and mathematical appeal is undeniable, microbial models are not just a pretty face; they serve as powerful tools for enhancing our understanding of the complex interactions between microorganisms, soils and climate, as well as the underlying mechanisms that regulate soil biogeochemistry. By integrating datasets and biological/physical principles, models can offer valuable insights into how microbial communities interact, respond and adapt to different habitat conditions and environmental stressors, ultimately influencing the cycles of carbon and nutrients in soils.
This interdisciplinary session aims to bring together modellers of different backgrounds working on the complexity of the soil microbial environment and its upscaling. For this, we invite modellers working both in silico, with individual-based and system-based approaches, and in situ/vitro, e.g. but not limited to synthetic microbial communities or microfluidic models. The session will serve as a platform for presenting new microbial models and discussing crucial aspects such as model validation, upscaling, and generalization.

Soils host by far most biodiversity on our planet. This soil biodiversity is essential for other life forms on Earth: plants as holobionts utterly depend on soil microbes to thrive, while other soil organisms drive nutrient cycles from micro to global scales.. Not surprisingly, soil biodiversity has become a ‘hot topic’ in science, as shown in a disproportional rise in often high-quality publications, and also has been raising political interest such as shown by the EU soil monitoring law. We now increasingly understand the diversity, composition and even functional profiles of many taxa in soils. Still, there are many frontiers waiting to be encountered in the field of soil biodiversity.
In this session, we aim to highlight these frontiers to eventually guide future efforts in soil biodiversity studies. We specifically welcome soil biodiversity-linked submissions on theoretical concepts, new methods and approaches, major new insights, but also insights obtained from links with other fields and future visions on the most promising avenues that is foreseen in the soil biodiversity research.

Soil microorganisms are the principal actors in key soil functions, including nutrient cycling, carbon transformation, and clean water provision. Their growth and anabolism rely on C and energy as well as various nutrients (e.g., N and P) in appropriate stoichiometric relationships. Various sources of organic matter fulfill these needs, which are transformed into new cellular growth, microbial storage compounds, microbial products or greenhouse gases such as CO2. Microbial death processes close the loop to return biomass to non-living soil organic matter as necromass, with altered properties. Theoretical and experimental approaches are providing new insights into this coupled, dynamic system and the diverse communities that drive it. This session integrates experimental and modelling insights to elucidate the energy and matter flows driven by soil microbial metabolism, their dependency on environmental conditions, and the implications for soil functioning.

We welcome submissions seeking to understand how, when and where soil microorganisms transform organic matter through their metabolism, growth and death. Topics of interest include characterization of microbial activity and turnover using advanced methods (e.g., isotope tracing, calorimetry, metagenomics), microbial ecophysiology and stoichiometry, carbon and energy-use efficiency, alongside approaches to understand microbial functional responses (e.g. dynamic modelling, artificial intelligence). We aim to stimulate interdisciplinary discussions to advance our understanding of soil biology at scales from the mechanistic understanding of biogeochemical processes to global change.

We are excited to have Stefano Manzoni (Stockholm University) as an invited speaker for the session.

Soil Health is the capacity of soil to function as an ecosystem, providing means to sustain biological productivity and thus to maintain environmental quality. Soil health is negatively impacted by both global change factors (warming, extreme weather events, elevated CO2 levels, droughts, floods, etc.) and human activity (intensive agriculture, technogenic events, etc.). Initial modification to the physical and chemical soil properties can have dramatic effects on soil biota, which is the main driver of all biogeochemical cycles of carbon and nutrients.
We invite contributions from field, laboratory and modeling studies focused on soil health descriptors, such as microbial respiration, enzyme activities, abundance of soil (micro)organisms and other soil biological parameters affected by global change and human activities. This session welcomes contributions on soil health assessment methods, with a focus on biological soil fertility and the ecosystem services provided by soils. We particularly encourage abstracts that explore soil health across scales, from micro-level to global perspectives.

Up to 70% of the soils in the EU, including agricultural soils, are in a bad shape and therefore overall soil health shall be restored by 2050. A central feature of healthy soils is high soil biodiversity that, accordingly, needs to be monitored and, where necessary, to be enhanced. To achieve the goal of healthy soils with a high structural and functional diversity, agricultural practices need to change. Modern methods and innovative approaches are needed that replace intensive conventional practices such as low spatial and temporal diversity of crops, high application rates of chemical fertilisers and plant protectants, coupled with frequent use of heavy machinery and large fields with limited landscape elements. Some methods in question are still being developed, whereas others have a long tradition in agriculture, albeit less well scientifically investigated. Research shows the benefit of alternative management means such as (bio)organic management, organic fertiliser application, low tillage intensity, optimised crop rotations, mixed cropping or agroforestry. These should result in a more stable yield in times of weather extremes, reduced management costs and especially benefits for (soil) biodiversity. Our session aims at showing results and concepts on the interplay between various agricultural management means and soil biodiversity and consequences for soil functions.

We welcome submissions on a wide range of topics related to agricultural management impacts on soil organisms and their functions, but also how soil biodiversity can help modern agricultural practices and eventually increase soil health.

Soil biota and their ecosystem services as main drivers of soil sustainability still need to come more into focus in both society (awareness) and science (understanding processes and interactions). Moreover, monitoring of soil biodiversity is needed to track long term impacts of land use and climate change on soil health mediated by soil biota.
Although land use and agricultural production heavily relies on multiple processes driven by soil organisms, soil biodiversity has rarely been considered when shaping farming systems and European agricultural policy. At the same time, there is growing awareness worldwide that soil health and biodiversity are interdependent and that reductions in soil biodiversity make soils more vulnerable to degradation processes (IPBES 2018, FAO and OECD 2018). The Sustainable Development Goal number 2 calls for implementing agriculture practices that improve resilience and health of soils to ensure sustainable food production systems by 2030. In order to find solutions for increasing soil sustainability and resilience across Europe, the scientific discussions on agricultural management, its impact and use on soil biota to improve soil status and health are essential. This session aims to focus on soil biota (1) as provider of services and key actors to get towards sustainable systems in land use with high self-regulating power, (2) on supporting and detracting practices of land use on soil biota to enable valuation of systems in terms of their soil biodiversity impact and (3) on methods and tools to improve soil biodiversity monitoring.

The interactions between plants and the environment play a prominent role in terrestrial fluxes and biochemical cycles. However, we still lack detailed knowledge of how these interactions impact plant growth and plant access to soil resources, particularly under deficient conditions. The main challenge arises from the complexity inherent to both soil and plants. To address these knowledge gaps, an improved understanding of plant-related transfer processes is needed.

Experimental techniques such as non-invasive imaging and three-dimensional root system modeling tools have deepened our insights into the functioning of water and solute transport processes in the soil-plant system. Quantitative approaches that integrate across disciplines and scales constitute stepping-stones to foster our understanding of fundamental biophysical processes at the interface between soil and plants.

This session targets research investigating plant-related resource transfer processes across different scales (from the rhizosphere to the global scale) and welcomes scientists from multiple disciplines encompassing the soil and plant sciences. We are specifically inviting contributions on the following topics:

- Identification of plant strategies to better access and use resources from the soil, including under abiotic stress(es)
- Bridging the gap between biologically and physically oriented research in soil and plant sciences
- Measuring and modeling of soil-plant hydraulics, water and solute fluxes through the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum across scales.
- Novel experimental and modeling techniques assessing below-ground plant status and processes such as root biomass, root growth, root water and nutrient uptake, root exudation, microbial interactions, and soil aggregation
- Mechanistic understanding of drought impact on transpiration and photosynthesis and their predictions by earth system models

The cold season dominates most of the year in Arctic and high latitude regions but is understudied due to difficult access and challenging working conditions. Nonetheless, plant and microbial activity and biogeochemical turnover continues during the non-growing season under snow cover and sub-zero temperatures. Such activity is likely to play an important role in year-round biological activity and ecosystem functioning, greenhouse gas fluxes, and nutrient cycling.
High latitude climate change is particularly pronounced during winter - where changing weather including extreme winter warming events, rain-on-snow events, and variable snow melt dates may substantially alter the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of terrestrial ecosystems and ecosystem interactions. However, there is a lack of data and understanding of the disruptions to soil-microbe-plant-snow-atmosphere interactions and ecosystem functioning resulting from changing winter conditions. Addressing the cold-season knowledge gap will bring us closer to a more comprehensive understanding of high latitude ecosystems and responses to seasonal and climatic changes.
In this interdisciplinary session, we aim to attract researchers working on the themes of Arctic and high latitude cold season biogeochemistry, microbiology and plant-soil processes. We want to bring multiple varied perspectives from different ecosystem constituents together, forming an integrated ecosystem approach that considers drivers, transformations, feedbacks, and interdependencies. We welcome studies focusing on experimental and modelling approaches to understand Arctic winter plant and microbial functioning, biogeochemical cycling, and associated impacts on the growing season, responses to changing Arctic seasonality, and winter climate regimes.

Methane production and consumption have long been attributed to a narrow range of environmental conditions and a handful of microbial groups. Studies in recent years have however broadened our view, and have shown many novel microbes and redox processes to be involved in methanotrophy and methanogenesis. Advanced molecular methods have revealed new metabolic pathways and new archaeal and bacterial groups involved in methane production or methane oxidation. Isotope labelling studies and visualisation techniques have helped to identify syntrophic relationships and coupled redox pathways in complex communities.

In this session we invite studies addressing methane biogeochemistry and microbiology, including redox chemistry and molecular ecology. This includes for example studies regarding electron transfer mechanisms, thermodynamics, or the coupled cycling of methane and other compounds such as nitrogen, sulfur, iron or organic compounds. But also microbiome focussed studies are welcomed, such as studies on novel microbes related to methane cycling, syntrophic relationships, and novel metabolic pathways discovered in methanotrophic or methanogenic organisms. We welcome studies from all kinds of geographical locations and environments, including lake, marine, wetland, soil and permafrost environments.

Mycorrhizal fungi are central to the functioning of forest ecosystems, playing a critical role in ecological processes such as nutrient cycling and carbon storage. Mycorrhizal fungi enhance nutrient uptake by trees, forest productivity, influence decomposition, and they contribute to organic matter accumulation. This session aims to bring together research investigating the diverse roles and functions of mycorrhizal fungi in forest ecosystems, with a focus on ectomycorrhizal, arbuscular, and ericoid mycorrhizal associations. We will explore how mycorrhizal fungi drive ecosystem functioning in its broadest sense, and how these processes respond to environmental changes, from climate change to forest management. We welcome contributions from research conducted across various forest biomes and scales, ranging from the global to petri dish scale, encompassing observational, experimental, and modeling approaches. By fostering discussion and sharing cutting-edge research, this session aims to deepen our understanding of mycorrhizal fungi in forest ecosystems, clarify their ecological importance, and highlight the need for continued exploration in this rapidly evolving field.

Climate change affects the dynamic feedbacks among plants, soil, and microbial communities, and thus strongly influences terrestrial biogeochemical cycling. In this session we address the question: What is the impact of changing environmental conditions on the plant-microbe-soil system, and what are the resulting effects on soil biogeochemistry? Given the positive and negative feedbacks with the climate system, dynamics of soil organic matter across terrestrial ecosystems are a key focus of this session.

We invite contributions from manipulative field experiments, observations in natural-climate gradients, and modeling studies that explore the climate change impacts on plant-soil interactions, biogeochemical cycling of C, N, P, microbial diversity and decomposition processes, and deep-soil biogeochemistry. Submissions that adopt novel approaches, e.g. molecular, isotopic, or synthesize outputs from large-scale, field experiments focusing on plant-soil-microbe feedbacks to warming, wetting, drying and thawing are very welcome.

This is the continuation of our 2023 and 2024 successful session on the same topic and focus. We would like to continue bringing people together with this session in order to learn from each other’s studies on soils and climate change from a global range of pedogenic and environmental settings.

Minerals constitute the very building blocks of soils and control important soil functions such as water infiltration, contaminant immobilisation, nutrient provision, and carbon storage. They create habitats for soil organisms, modify soil pore spaces for gas and liquid transport through soil, and take part in numerous chemical reactions involving both organic and inorganic substances. In order to establish soils as part of the solutions for the abundant anthropogenic challenges, a thorough understanding of soil mineralogy, its dynamics in space and time, and of interactions between soil minerals with other soil components is critical. This session celebrates the fundamental contributions of soil mineralogy to our understanding of soil systems at multiple scales. We invite contributions that feature soil minerals as controls of matter and energy fluxes, their interaction with organic and inorganic soil nutrients and contaminants, and as controls of physical soil properties. Contributions addressing soil mineral transformations in dynamic environments are equally welcome. Our session offers a broad forum to discuss the most recent advances in exploring the diverse functions of soil minerals at any temporal or spatial scale and to address their responses to changing environmental conditions. This will help identify future directions for soil mineralogical research and strengthen the perspective of soil minerals as fundamental mediators of soil physical and (bio)chemical processes.

Soil organic matter (SOM) plays a vital role not only in soil fertility and quality (by providing a number of physical, chemical, and biological benefits), but also in carbon cycling. SOM contains a vast range of diverse organic structures, and also a living component (microorganisms) with various residence times that define the central role SOM plays in the soil. The decline of SOM represents one of the most serious threats facing many arable lands of the world. One of the efficient approaches to increase SOM content and decrease land degradation is the application of organic amendments, such as crop residues and animal manures. Nowadays, organic amendments originate from many kinds of organic wastes, which are being increasingly produced mainly by farms, agro-food industries, municipalities, and energy plants. Besides serving as a source of organic matter and plant nutrients, these materials may contribute to reduce soil contamination, erosion, and desertification, as well as mitigate climate change. At the same time, a safe and useful application of organic amendments requires an in-depth scientific knowledge of their nature and impacts on the SOM pools and factions, soil-plant system, as well as on the surrounding environment.
This session will combine the current research and recent advances on the use of organic amendments in modern agriculture as well as for the restoration of degraded soils. Special attention will be given to the soil chemical, physical, biological and biochemical aspects. Field and laboratory studies focused on the effects of management practices, climate change, environmental conditions, soil properties are highly welcome.

The spatial arrangement of soil systems, i.e. their architecture, is critical for diverse soil functions shaping biogeochemical matter cycles. This session highlights diverse studies connecting chemical, physical, and biological perspectives related to organic matter dynamics.

The cycling of carbon (C) and key nutrients, such as nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), in soils is crucial for maintaining ecosystem health, agricultural productivity, and climate regulation. As global challenges, such as climate change, soil degradation, and nutrient imbalances intensify, there is a rising demand for advanced analytical methods that can unravel the complexities of these biogeochemical cycles.
The session aims to bring together experts from a broad range of disciplines, including soil science, biogeochemistry, analytical chemistry, and related fields, to discuss innovative analytical techniques that improve our understanding of C, N, and P cycling. We welcome discussions on the application of cutting-edge methods such as high-resolution spectroscopy, stable isotope techniques, molecular-level analyses, and other emerging approaches to address long-standing questions on the dynamics, interactions, and transformations of C, N, and P in diverse soil environments—from agricultural lands to natural ecosystems.
We invite contributions from researchers who are at the forefront of employing or developing these novel tools to decipher C, N, and P cycling in soil. This session will provide a platform for discussing the challenges, opportunities, and future directions in soil element cycling, fostering collaborations across disciplines.

Soils represent a major terrestrial store of both organic and inorganic carbon. At present soils are a net carbon sink, and building soil carbon stocks holds a potential to contribute to achieving net zero carbon. Furthermore, the accrual, stability, and cycling of carbon is fundamental to the productivity and resilience of soil systems, and preserving or even increasing soil carbon stocks is critical for allowing sustainable agricultural crop production.

Avenues for organic carbon sequestration in soils include plant-based inputs, the addition of pyrogenic carbon (biochar), and addition of composts or other additives such as manures and soil conditioners provided additionality and leakage effects are considered. Enhanced silicate weathering may hold significant potential for building up inorganic carbon stocks, while inputs from bedrock, and mediation by land use changes such as afforestation, may also increase inorganic soil carbon stocks.

This session seeks to explore how soil carbon stocks can be increased so as to simultaneously enhance agricultural productivity, mitigate negative repercussions of changing environmental conditions, and contribute to achieving carbon neutrality. Alongside this, advances in methods for monitoring and modelling rates of soil carbon loss or carbon sequestration in soils are key to inform political, agronomical, and geo-engineering approaches. We welcome contributions exploring methods of increasing both organic and inorganic carbon stocks, and studies exploring the storage, stability, and cycling of carbon within soil systems. Early career researchers are strongly encouraged to apply, and we seek submissions considering empirical, modelling, or meta-analytical approaches.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) and inorganic carbon (SIC) are fundamental to the maintenance of the ecosystem services provided by soils. SOC is dynamic and reactive, resulting in a complex array of interactions between it and the soil mineral phase or metal species. These dynamic interactions are ultimately linked to the persistence and accumulation of SOC across scales ranging from micro- to global scale. This session is dedicated to studies investigating the dynamic interactions, underlying mechanisms, and implications of organo-mineral and organo-metal interactions at different scales. It includes studies on the quality, type, and sources of SOC (e.g. plant, microbial, pyrogenic), its storage within aggregates, and its association with mineral surfaces or metals across all pedoclimatic settings and their responses to management practices. However, we also welcome studies that investigate both SOC, SIC, and their interactions utilizing a broad range of analytical techniques including field, laboratory, modelling, and spectroscopic approaches. We put emphasis on contributions addressing the biogeochemical effects of different mineral amendments such as rock (e.g. silicate rich rock) powder on both the inorganic and organic carbon cycle of soils. This session thus aims to enhance our mechanistic understanding of the interactions between soil carbon and minerals at different weathering stages or metal species across scales in all pedoclimatic settings.

While many trace metal(loid)s (e.g., Zn, Cu, Fe) are essential for plants and humans, they can harm soil fertility or reduce yields at high concentrations. Other metal(loid)s are non-essential but can be readily transferred from soils via crops into the food chain and threaten human health (e.g., As, Cd, Hg, Sb). To understand the behavior, fate and effects of essential and non-essential metal(loid)s in soils and plants, it is crucial to quantify their fluxes and to identify the biogeochemical processes that control their mobility. This session aims to spotlight i) the latest advancements in methodologies, including elemental, isotopic, spectroscopic, microbial profiling, and imaging techniques to investigate the biogeochemical processes that govern metal(loid) mobility in soil-plant systems; ii) studies that offer novel insights into the fate of metal(loid)s in distinct soils, plants, and holistic soil-plant systems. We welcome contributions that include fundamental and applied research based on laboratory work, soil incubation experiments, greenhouse experiments, field experiments, and/or modeling approaches. This session also encourages research investigating the potential effects of ongoing and future global changes, such as climate change and healthy food production. Additionally, we seek studies proposing solutions to deal with metal(loid) excess (e.g., phytoremediation) and limited trace metal(loid) supply for crops (e.g., fertilization, plant breeding).

Preserving and enhancing soil organic carbon (SOC) is crucial for sustaining agricultural productivity, improving soil health, and addressing global environmental challenges. This session will focus on measuring, modeling, and predicting SOC across various scales, with the goal of expanding our understanding of how SOC responds to global stressors such as climate change, land use changes, and management practices. The session also welcomes the submission of innovative strategies to promote SOC sequestration and resilience, contributing to ecosystem sustainability and broader environmental solutions.

Soil is an essential non-renewable resource that provides food for society and supports ecosystems. Almost 50% of European soils are used for agricultural activities. Moreover, in the current context of frequent extreme weather events, soils are more vulnerable to higher erosion rates and lixiviation phenomena. It is therefore crucial to implement sustainable practices that can help mitigate climate change while maintaining soil fertility in the long term. Appropriate land management plays a key role in ensuring good long-term soil health. This has a direct impact on the soil, not only affecting soil organic matter (SOM) content, soil organic carbon (SOC) storage and associated microbial communities, but also altering soil structure and soil respiration rates.
The proposed session aims to increase our knowledge of how land management practices affect soil properties and biogeochemical processes by bringing together reports of laboratory and field work investigating (1) the impact of land management on soil structure, (2) the chemical and biological responses of SOM to above-ground practices, (3) changes in SOC content under different agricultural practices, (4) the effect of crop diversification on soil quality, and (5) studies analysing the response of soil microbial communities to agricultural management.

The interactions of minerals, organic matter, and microorganisms directly and indirectly control key functions of soil, including plant nutrition and carbon preservation. Despite extensive research over the last decades, several aspects are still either not fully understood or under debate. In particular, the roles of microorganisms in the formation and breakdown of mineral–associated organic matter (MAOM) under changing environmental conditions are a focal point of recent research activities. Similarly, the potential maximum carbon storage potential of the soil mineral fraction is unresolved, as are drivers of the relative importance of plant- versus microbial derived carbon accumulation on mineral surfaces, the role of biodiversity, and how the formation and turnover of MAOM will be affected by various global change drivers.
We invite contributions reporting on conceptual, experimental, and modelling approaches on how mineral composition and microorganism jointly drive the formation and stability of mineral associated organic matter and how they are influenced by land use, vegetation type, and the abiotic soil environment. Also, studies considering the role of mineral weathering, and aggregation in this context are welcome.

Regulation of the cycles of carbon (C) and nutrients (N, P, S) in soils and ensuring their linkage and retention are recognized as major challenges, especially under shifts in environmental factors (warming, drought, N deposition, overfertilization, salinization, alterations of landscapes, biodiversity loss, invasion of species and intensification of land use). The processes underlying C and nutrient cycling in soils are difficult to evaluate and separate since multiple factors can shift process rates and directions and determine pool sizes. Factors also frequently have an interactive effect. Estimating the magnitude of C and nutrient pool response and the temporal scale of reactions to land use change or shifts of environmental factors remains a significant challenge. Thus, this session invites contributions focused on evaluating the soil C, N, P, and S pools and process responses under global change scenarios at the local and large scales. Studies that combine short-term laboratory observation focused on process rate estimation with long-term field experiments and evaluation of pools are highly welcome. Studies that focus on the effect of soil chemistry, including an application of isotopes to investigate the process rates, mineralogy, and the transition from conventional to organic agriculture/land restoration, are also highly relevant.

Modern agriculture has led to the degradation of inherent soil organic matter (SOM) and release of CO2 into the atmosphere. Contrastingly, in recent years it has been proposed that there is a potential not only to reduce agricultural CO2 emissions but also to transform farms into carbon capturing systems, contributing to climate mitigation. Carbon farming (i.e., SOM accrual through agriculture), is an attractive solution, as it has many agronomic advantages and can potentially contribute to crop resilience towards climate change. But, is carbon farming for climate mitigation a plausible reality or just fantasy? Despite years of research, there are still open questions regarding carbon farming such as: How will climate change impact SOM accrual achieved by carbon farming? Is there a limit to SOM storage in soil? How to quantify SOM changes and indices of its stability in agricultural systems? What is the scale of compensation? Are carbon credits a viable solution? These questions point to gaps in our understanding of SOM dynamics and its transformation to agricultural practice and policy.
In this session, we aim to raise the discussion on carbon farming and promote knowledge interchange towards enhancement of SOM accrual. We invite contributions that focus on agricultural systems including experimental studies on novel agro-technical strategies to accrue SOM, crop and soil biome modifications for enhanced SOM accrual, advances in methods to estimate SOM stocks, research on SOM dynamics as well as life cycle analysis, meta-analysis and modelling. For this matter, we relate to all farming systems, including field crops, orchards, greenhouses and grazing systems. Moreover, critical approaches on carbon farming and climate justice are invited.

Global warming is one of the most urgent environmental challenges of our time, driven predominantly by the excessive release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and nitrous oxide (N₂O). Human activities have been the primary contributors to the rise in GHG emissions, making the mitigation of these emissions through sustainable ecosystem management a critical strategy for achieving global climate targets. Soils, as the largest carbon reservoir in terrestrial ecosystems, play a pivotal role in this context. Even small changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) levels can lead to significant fluctuations in atmospheric CO₂, potentially intensifying climate change through positive feedback loops. However, the response of SOC to climate change remains one of the major uncertainties in predicting future climate scenarios. For instance, how SOC stability will respond to ongoing global warming is still poorly understood.
Furthermore, soil serves as both a source and a sink for N₂O and CH₄, with the magnitude and direction of these fluxes determined by the balance between production and consumption processes. To effectively mitigate global warming, it is essential to simultaneously promote soil organic matter sequestration and reduce GHG emissions. Yet, many strategies aimed at achieving these goals often produce unintended trade-offs, where addressing one issue exacerbates another. For example, agricultural practices intended to increase SOC storage, such as the application of organic matter and no-tillage farming, can inadvertently stimulate N₂O emissions by promoting denitrification processes. Therefore, future research must urgently focus on developing integrated strategies that account for these trade-offs, ensuring a balanced approach that optimizes both carbon sequestration and GHG emission reductions without triggering adverse side effects.

Soils are one of the largest terrestrial sinks for organic carbon, and therefore present a promising opportunity to mitigate climate change. Over the past decade, many global initiatives have been launched to enhance soils’ capacity to sequester and store organic carbon. A noteworthy example is the ‘4 per mille’ scheme, launched at the Paris Climate Change Conference in 2015. This initiative proposed that annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning could be offset if the global stock of soil organic carbon was increased annually at the rate of 4 parts per 1000. Eight years have elapsed since this initiative was launched, and a debate ensues about the extent to which soils have the capacity to endlessly increase their carbon storage. In this session, we will showcase research that interrogates both arguments of the ‘carbon saturation threshold’ debate. Is there a threshold above which a soil profile can no longer increase its carbon storage? If so, what is this threshold, and what are the implications for both land management and our Net Zero Carbon targets? What are the mechanisms determining differences between soils’ soil carbon saturation thresholds, and over what timescales may saturation limit the capacity of soils to mitigate climate change? We welcome empirical work, model-based efforts, or desk-based reviews. Early career researchers are strongly encouraged to apply.

Anthropogenic disturbance of the global nitrogen (N) cycle has more than doubled the amount of reactive N circulating in the terrestrial biosphere alone. Exchange of reactive/non-reactive nitrogen gases between land and atmosphere are strongly affecting Earth’s atmospheric composition, air quality, global warming, climate change and human health. This session seeks to improve our understanding of a) how intensification of reactive N use, land management and climate change affects the pools and fluxes of nitrogen in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, b) and how reactive N enrichment of land and water will affect the future carbon sink of natural ecosystems as well as atmospheric exchanges of reactive (NO, N2O, NH3, HONO, NO2 and non-reactive N (N2) gases with implications for global warming, climate change and air quality. We welcome contributions covering a wide range of experimental and modelling studies, which covers microbes-mediated and physico-chemical transformations and transport of nitrogen across the land-water-air continuum in natural ecosystems from local to regional and global scales. Furthermore, the interactions of nitrogen with other elemental cycles (e.g. phosphorus, carbon) and the impacts of these interactive feedbacks for soil health, biodiversity and water and air quality will be explored in this session. Latest developments in methodological innovations and observational and experimental approaches for unravelling the complexities of nitrogen transformations and transport will also be of interest. This session will be celebrating its 10th anniversary for nitrogen science and cycling at the EGU2025.

Phosphorus (P) is an essential element for life on Earth and is tightly cycled within the biosphere. Throughout geological history, P availability has regulated biological productivity with impacts on the global carbon cycle. Today, human activities are significantly changing the natural cycling of P. Phosphate mining threatens P reserves, while increased inputs of P to terrestrial ecosystems have enhanced fluxes of P to lakes and the oceans.

Direct anthropogenic perturbations of the P cycle, coupled with other human-induced stresses, have impacted numerous environments. Forest ecosystems may be losing their ability to recycle P efficiently, due to excessive N input, extensive biomass removal, and climatic stress. Soils, which serve as the biogeochemical fulcrum of the terrestrial P cycle, have been greatly altered by fertilizer use in recent decades. Changes in the P cycle on land impact the magnitude and timing of P fluxes into aquatic ecosystems, influencing their trophic state. Burial in sediments returns P to the geological reservoir, eventually forming economically viable P deposits. Throughout the P cycle, redox conditions play a key role in transformations and mobility of P. Climate change and its mitigation affect and will further disrupt global P cycles. For example, the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere through an increase in global soil organic carbon stocks implies P sequestration.

This interdisciplinary session invites contributions to the study of P from all disciplines, and aims to foster collaborations links between researchers working on different aspects of the P cycle. We target a balanced session giving equal weight across the continuum of environments in the P cycle, from agriculture, forests, soils and groundwater, through lakes, rivers and estuaries, to oceans, marine sediments and geological P deposits. We welcome both empirical and modeling studies.

Dissolved and particulate organic carbon (DOM, POM) are key components of the global carbon cycle and are important as potential sources of CO2 and CH4, and for the long-term preservation of carbon stabilized in subsoils and sediments. DOM and POM are important sources of energy for microbial metabolism within terrestrial ecosystems, the aquatic continuum, and, ultimately, the ocean. Despite recent evidence showing this lateral transport of carbon is linked to anthropogenic perturbations, efforts to integrate DOM and POM fluxes across the terrestrial-aquatic continuum are just emerging. A comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of DOM and POM, and their interactions, in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems remains challenging due to complex interactions of biogeochemical and hydrological processes at different scales, i.e. from the molecular to the landscape scale.
This session aims to improve our understanding of organic matter processing at the interface of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. We solicit contributions dealing with amounts, composition, reactivity, and fate of DOM and POM and the stoichiometry of its constituents (i.e., C, N, P, S) in soils, lakes, rivers, and the ocean as well as the impact of land use change and climatic change on these processes. For example, when assessing carbon dynamics across the terrestrial-aquatic continuum, it is important to recognize the key role of peatlands and peat restoration efforts as sources of organic matter for streams and rivers, as well as the contribution of mineral soil horizons to C fluxes at the catchment scale. Contributions addressing lateral fluxes of sediment and carbon induced by soil erosion or permafrost thaw are also welcome. We aim to bring together scientists from various backgrounds, but all devoted to the study of dissolved and/or particulate organic matter using a broad spectrum of methodological approaches (e.g. molecular, spectroscopic, isotopic, 14C, other tracers, and modeling).

The interplay between natural organic matter (NOM) and decomposer communities at the nexus of solids, solutes and volatiles regulates a C reservoir larger than all living biomass on Earth, making it a keystone in the global carbon cycle. Despite its ubiquitousness, NOM remains a black box due to its astonishing molecular complexity. Advances in ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS, Orbitrap, TOF-MS) have enabled researchers to analyze NOM in all forms - solid, soluble and volatile - on the molecular-level. Ultimately, this allows to resolve the molecular complexity of NOM, and to elucidate its mediating role in various processes essential for life on Earth, such as energy flow, nutrient retention and resupply, or climate stability.

The challenge ahead of us is to synthesize the gained knowledge from various research communities (biogeochemistry, soil sciences, atmospheric sciences, aquatic sciences, analytical chemistry, geomicrobiology), ultimately providing useful data and process understanding to integrate in C cycle models that represent its molecular complexity in a more realistic way. To achieve this, it is also required to develop computational methods to align FT-ICR-MS data with complementary spectroscopic and mass spectrometric techniques (NMR, FT-IR, XPS, py-GC-MS, EEMs-PARAFAC, PTR-MS, etc.) and allow for a community-driven effort to share, curate and compare global molecular-level datasets.

In this session we therefore welcome proceedings in the following domains:
- Experimental, e.g. focusing on single or combined processes of NOM biogeochemistry or its links with other drivers such as microbial communities,
- Field-scale, e.g. studying the behavior of NOM across environmental gradients or interfaces,
- Modeling and simulation, e.g. integrating molecular-level data to improve the prediction of environmental processes or simulate ecosystem functioning,
- Computational, e.g. bioinformatic approaches to facilitate the analysis of molecular-level NOM data, or allowing its integration with complementary data streams,
- Analytical, e.g. improving or expanding the measurement of NOM on the molecular level, or providing novel tools to reveal its properties, responses or effects

We are looking forward to bringing together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to share their perspectives on studying NOM at EGU25!

Pyrogenic organic matter (PyOM) can derive from natural (e.g., wildfire charcoal), as well as anthropogenic sources (e.g., biochar). Due to pyrolysis, PyOM is a highly condensed, aromatic material which is recognized as an important carbon sink in terrestrial and aquatic systems. With the potential to make wildfires a net sink of carbon or enhance carbon storage when applied in soils as biochar. Depending on its properties, PyOM can influence physical-, chemical-, and microbial soil functions. This can include, for example, releasing aromatic compounds, sorbing native organic matter, changing redox- and pH conditions, disintegrating into micro- and nanoparticles, and forming aggregates by mineral surface interactions. Thereby, PyOM can impact nutrient cycling and plant productivity, pollutant mobility, the soil microbiome, and edaphic fauna. These processes are of high importance for soil biochemistry, functioning, and carbon cycling but remain still largely unknown on the process- to field-scale. This is further related to the challenge of quantifying and measuring PyOM in complex soil matrices. To better understand the effects of PyOM on soils and affected ecosystems, a better knowledge of the abovementioned interlinked processes and novel methods are urgently needed.
This session aims to bring together monodisciplinary as well interdisciplinary research on PyOM-soil biogeochemistry. Early career researchers and underrepresented groups in the field are strongly encouraged to apply, including submissions from micro- to landscape scale experiments as well as modeling, or meta-analytical approaches and analytical developments.

The study of nitrogen (N) processes in soils has a long and distinguished history. Recent research efforts have targeted the direct quantification of N turnover in the soil plant atmosphere system across scales. Nevertheless, methodological constraints, the high spatial and temporal variability of soil N transformation, and the multitude of interacting factors determining N availability and loss from soils presents significant challenges that make accurate quantification difficult, thereby limiting our quantitative understanding of the N turnover.
Although the factors controlling N turnover in soils are relatively well established under laboratory conditions, transposing these relationships to the field and landscape scales remains a significant challenge. The absence of data-sets collected in-situ impedes the validation of N processes, such as mineralization and denitrification simulated via process-based models, thereby rendering their results at field and regional scales highly uncertain. However, current ecosystem management challenges require accurate predictions of N fate to enable sustainable management that minimizes environmental losses.

We invite contributions from the following fields:
• Methodological advances in measuring and modelling of soil N processes, spanning from the micro- to the landscape scale;
• Measurements of N fluxes including specific loss pathways under field or field-like conditions with a focus on identifying controlling factors;
• Comparative studies demonstrating/evaluating novel approaches to constrain N turnover such as incubation under He/O2 atmosphere, 15N-tracer technique, N2O isotopologue approaches or other innovative methods;
• Process-based modelling of soil N processes at various scales;
• Linking nitrogen transformation rates to the function and structure of the soil microbial community.

Soils sustain complex patterns of life and act as biogeochemical reactors producing and consuming a large amount of gas molecules. They play a fundamental role in the temporal evolution of concentrations of many gas species in the atmosphere (greenhouse gases, biogenic volatile organic compounds, nitrous acid, isotopic composition…). On the other hand, the specific gas concentration in the soil may differ substantially from the typical atmospheric concentrations and can also affect many soil functions, such as root and plant growth, microbial activity, and stabilization of soil organic carbon. Thus, the production, consumption and transport of gases in the different soil types have important ecological implications for the earth system.
The factors affecting the soil gas processes range from physical soil structure (porosity, soil texture and structure,…), type and amount of living material (microbiota, root systems), soil chemical properties (carbon and nitrogen contents, pH,…) and soil meteorological conditions (temperature, water content,…). Different scientific backgrounds are therefore required to improve the knowledge about their influence which is made even more difficult due to the very large spatial heterogeneity of these factors and the complexity of their interactions.
This session will be the place to present and exchange about the measurement techniques, data analyses and modelling approaches that can help to figure out the temporal and spatial variability of the production/consumption and transport of gases in soils. In addition to mechanisms related to carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), including the geochemical cycles, also abstracts about volatile carbon compounds produced by plant and microbes, or phenomena including noble gases such as Helium and Radon are highly welcome A special attention will be given to the research including critical situations such as drought or waterlogged soils, and special gas transport phenomena in soils including plant mediated gas transport.

Soils and sediments are heterogeneous over space and time and across multiple scales. As a result, biogeochemical processes in soils are also heterogeneous over space and time. However, the degree to which small scale biogeochemical “anomalies” alter the fate of soil carbon, nutrients, and contaminants remains unknown. This session explores how heterogeneous soil processes and/or properties influence larger scale carbon, nutrient, and/or contaminant mobility. Topics may include (but are not limited to) how aggregate, moisture, rhizosphere, and redox dynamics ultimately influence 1) nutrient and contaminant behavior 2) greenhouse gas emissions 3) soil carbon storage and 4) mineral transformations. We welcome lab, field, or theoretical modelling-based studies spanning the nano-, micro-, meso-, and macro- scales as well as novel methodological insights that advance understanding of heterogeneous soil processes and their importance in biogeochemical cycles.

Nature-based Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technologies are a vital component in the fight against climate change. As emphasized by the IPCC, large-scale CDR will be essential to achieving the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, especially in offsetting emissions from sectors that are difficult to decarbonize. Nature-based solutions such as reforestation, soil carbon sequestration, and blue carbon ecosystems offer not only a means of removing CO2 but also deliver multiple co-benefits, including biodiversity enhancement, ecosystem restoration, and community resilience.

In addition to their carbon sequestration potential, nature-based CDR initiatives can be integrated into sustainable business models rooted in the principles of the circular economy. These models promote regeneration, restoration, and sustainable resource management, creating value while ensuring ecosystems remain resilient and productive. The co-benefits of these strategies extend beyond carbon capture, supporting ecosystems through improved soil health, water retention, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable land-use practices.

We invite contributions focusing on technical innovations for the sustainable implementation of nature-based climate solutions capable of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a gigaton scale. We welcome case studies demonstrating how these implementations have progressed from Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) to the voluntary Carbon Removal Market. Additionally, we encourage submissions exploring the integration of circular economy principles with CDR, as well as research assessing the co-benefits of CDR on ecosystem restoration, biodiversity protection, and broader environmental and social impacts. Join us in exploring how advancing nature-based CDR technologies can create a more sustainable, regenerative future while delivering significant climate benefits.

The role of natural hydrogen (a.k.a. “geological”, or “white” hydrogen) as a potential major contributor to a decarbonized energy system in the future has sparked significant debate in recent years. Geological helium resources, independent of co-production with fossil fuels, have similarly attracted the attention of both scientists and industry professionals, especially when co-located with hydrogen.

To date, a truly interdisciplinary scientific understanding of the subsurface natural hydrogen/helium system is lacking, with knowledge being fragmented across disciplines, and exploration/assessment workflows in their infancy. This session aims to address key subsurface aspects of geological hydrogen/helium systems, soliciting contributions from a broad range of disciplines, covering solid earth geosciences, geochemistry, hydrology, remote sensing and soil system sciences. In particular, the session aims to address:

- Generation potential and migration/possible accumulation processes and fluid pathways
- Geological history of such systems through the Wilson cycle
- Source rock/origin and conversion kinetics, flux estimates and relation to emplacement/host environment through geological time
- Spatial characteristics of geological hydrogen/helium systems - distribution, 3D geometry and their activity through geological time.
- Measurement and instrumentation aspects to detect, characterize, and quantify source, fluxes, shallow subsurface interactions and surface leakage of H2 and He.
- Natural hydrogen/helium occurrences and recent discoveries

Life in soil modifies its physical environment to optimize growth and reproductive conditions. Especially in hotspots of biological activity, soil organisms induce remarkable alterations in soil structure and functions. Elucidating the underlying mechanisms forcing such adaptive modifications, and exploring the feedbacks between the drivers, offers an exceptional opportunity to advance our understanding of fundamental physical and biological processes across scales.
We seek contributions linking biological processes and soil physics at any spatial and temporal scale. For example, insights into how the rhizosphere and its microbiome control fluxes beyond the pore scale; on the role of biological soil crust in regulating infiltration and limiting soil erosion across vast areas of the earth’s surface and; on how bioturbation shapes soil hydraulic characteristics over years and decades.
Topics of the Soil Biophysics session include but are not limited to:

1. Root growth
2. Microbial activity
3. Bioturbation
4. Virus dispersal
5. Resource allocation
6. Soil water dynamics
7. Soil structure formation
8. Biological soil crusts
9. Rhizosphere interactions
10. EPS (incl. mucilage)

The aim of this session is to highlight the potential of interdisciplinary approaches to address current and future challenges in soil science and to foster scientific exchange across disciplines.

Soil structure and its stability determine soil physical functions and chemical properties such as water retention, hydraulic conductivity, macropore flow, matter transport, nutrient leaching, redox potentials, and susceptibility to erosion. These soil physical and chemical characteristics are fundamental for biological processes, among them root penetration and organic matter and nutrient dynamics. The soil pore network determines soil aeration, and to a large part the soil hydrological regime and forms the habitat for soil biota, which in turn actively reshape the soil pore network. The soil biota, root growth, land management practices like tillage and abiotic drivers (e.g. wetting/drying cycles) lead to a constant evolution of the arrangement of pores, minerals and organic matter. With this, also the soil functions and properties are perpetually changing. The importance of the interaction between soil structure (and thus soil functions) on one side and soil biology, climate and soil management on the other, is highlighted by recent research outcomes, which are based on advanced imaging techniques and novel experimental setups. Understanding the mechanisms and factors controlling soil functions is a prerequisite for climate smart farming systems. Still, present studies have barely scratched the surface of what there is to discover.

In this session, we are inviting contributions on the formation and alteration of soil structure and its associated soil functions over time. Special focuses are on feedbacks between soil structure dynamics and soil biology as well as the impact of mechanical stress exerted by heavy vehicles deployed under land management operations. Further, we encourage submissions that integrate complementary measurement techniques or aim at bridging different scales.

Multiphase flows play a central role in a broad range of natural and engineered processes, such as nutrient cycles and contaminant remediation in soils, and geological storage of carbon dioxide and hydrogen in deep reservoirs. Understanding multiphase systems across scales is therefore fundamental for water resources management as well energy and climate concerns.

The presence of multiple fluid phases enhances heterogeneity at the level of flow, mixing, and reaction in structurally heterogeneous media. This impacts the transport of dissolved substances and fundamentally changes mixing patterns and effective reaction rates, posing major challenges for predictive modeling. Recent theoretical and experimental advances provide unprecedented insights into the pore-scale mechanisms governing these processes and open new opportunities to tackle these challenges.

This session aims to bring together researchers working on fundamental and applied aspects of flow, transport, mixing, and reaction in multi-phase systems across scales. In particular, we encourage submissions relating to experimental, numerical, and theoretical contributions pertaining to the following topics:

- Impact of medium heterogeneity on multiphase flow, from the pore to the continuum scale.
- Impact of multiphase flow patterns on mixing and reaction rates across scales in heterogeneous media.
- Biogeochemical processes in multiphase systems.
- Applications to vadose zone hydrology and geological storage.

Critical zones (CZ) are natural and anthropogenic environments where air, water, soil, and rock interact in complex ways with ecosystems and society. Groundwater is the largest reservoir in this integrated system, but it is often overlooked due to the challenges of accessing it and its slower movement compared to other CZ components. However, dedicated CZ observatories (e.g. eLTER and CZEN) and intensively instrumented study areas provide extensive and detailed data on groundwater flow under contrasting climates, geology, vegetation and land use, and offer the opportunity for comprehensive multi-site studies.. This session aims to showcase contributions that highlight such studies, which enhance our understanding of water fluxes within the critical zone and their crucial role in energy and material cycles.

We invite presentations that address key research questions, such as (i) How do components across different scales—from the vertical column, including the atmosphere, vegetation, soil, and bedrock, to large-scale hydrosystems, spanning headwaters and 2D hillslopes, and from surface waters and the vadose zone to the deeper limits of groundwater—interact and interconnect?, (ii) How can we bridge the gap between rapid subsurface and slow groundwater flow processes with longer-term environmental changes that collectively shape the critical zone? (iii) What are the potential consequences of climate warming, extreme weather events, and wildfires on groundwater recharge, discharge processes, and water quality?

This session aims to bring together researchers and scientists from diverse backgrounds to advance our understanding of groundwater’s role in the critical zone. We seek to illustrate how combining observations and numerical experiments can help delineate future predictions for groundwater systems under various climate and land-use evolution scenarios.

Observing soil moisture at the ground is essential to assess plant available water, manage water resources and calibrate, validate satellite products and conduct climate impact studies. Unfortunately, the availability of in situ observations is very limited in space and time. Whereas the spatial distribution is biased towards the global North, the average temporal variability of soil moisture time series is on average 10 years as can be seen from the largest archive of in situ soil moisture, the International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN). Apart of the data availability issues, a substantial amount of the in situ observations face data quality issues that might result from sensor deployment, sensor calibration, data processing or other error sources.
This session is meant to address issues in the development and deployment of state-of-the-art soil moisture observation networks, the financing of its long-term operation, data quality assurance, as well as sensor deployment and assessments of differences between these deployments. We further encourage contributions presenting developments of novel measurement techniques including citizen science initiatives and studies utilizing in situ soil moisture for water availability assessments.

The proper management of blue and green water is vital for sustainable livelihoods and agricultural practices around the world. This is especially true in drylands, where any productive activity is deeply related to the understanding of soil hydrological behaviour, and irrigation is both a pillar of agroecosystems and a defence against desertification, but also in temperate or humid lands which can experience variations in the hydrological cycle and be prone to water scarcity due to climate change.
Improper practices, which are not able to cope with climate-induced variability and anomalies, may in fact contribute to soil degradation and depletion of the available water sources. For example, incorrect irrigation techniques may lead to soil and groundwater salinization, with dramatic fallout on agricultural productivity, while overgrazing may lead to exploitation of vegetation cover, soil compaction, and adverse effects on the soil capability of water buffering. On the other hand, the role of irrigation goes beyond the technological aspects: traditional irrigation is a cultural heritage, which is often structurally resilient, and which needs to be faced with an interdisciplinary approach involving humanities.

This session welcomes contributions with a specific focus on:
- The understanding of the soil hydrological behaviour and of the mass fluxes through the soil in drylands and environments under actual or projected stress conditions (e.g. water shortage, compaction, salinization)
- The interaction between irrigation and soil hydrology including deep drainage
- The analysis of the bio-geo-physical and social dynamics related to rainfed and irrigated agriculture in both arid and non-arid areas and oases, including the use of non-conventional waters (e.g. water harvesting), and managed aquifer recharge systems
- The management of rangeland areas, including their restoration

This session is co—sponsored by the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID, to be confirmed) and the International Center for Agriculture Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA, to be confirmed).

This session aims to bring together scientists working in the field of vadose zone hydrology across spatial scales ranging from the pore- to the catchment- and continental scale. Recent regional and continental-scale drought events and flood events urge the need for better understanding the role of vadose zone processes in the Earth system. The state of the vadose zone controls biogeochemical processes, nutrient and pollutant transport, catchment response functions, land-atmosphere exchange, and rainfall-runoff processes. In addition, the vadose zone as part of the critical zone provides important ecosystem services. Key research challenges include amongst others improving characterization of vadose zone properties, reducing uncertainty in quantifying vadose zone water fluxes including exchange with aquifers and surface waters and feedbacks within the soil-vegetation-atmosphere continuum. Guided by advanced sensor technologies, high-frequency observations and reanalysis, scientists are able to bridge scales and deduct processes at unprecedented resolutions for an in-depth more data-driven understanding of vadose zone processes.

In tandem with big data availability, new methods in machine learning and artificial intelligence may provide additional methodological capacity to understand the role of vadose zone, especially when tackling dynamic behavior of vadose zone properties as a result of changing frequency, duration and magnitude of drought and flood events.

We invite you to submit contributions from experimental, field and laboratory studies as well as synthetic and modeling studies from the pore to continental scales. Contributions to this session include soil hydrological processes, characterization of soil properties, soil biogeochemical processes, transport of pollutants, and studies on the soil-vegetation-atmosphere system. Presentations of novel, interdisciplinary approaches and techniques are also highly welcome.

The continuum approach is a classical framework to describe and understand the soil—water dynamics and the soil effective—stress state in unsaturated soils. This approach is robustly rooted in the definition of the soil—water constitutive laws (soil—water retention curve, soil hydraulic conductivity, Kirchhoff potential, etc.). They link the real soil and its model. Advancements along their development and the comprehension of their role stand at the intersection of experimental measurements, mathematical representation and modelling, numerical solutions, theoretical understandings and practical applications.

This session aims at stimulating an interdisciplinary discussion about the state of the art and recent advances about soil—water constitutive laws and soil physical and hydrological properties, in the framework of a continuum approach and contributing to define its limits.

Experimental, theoretical and numerical contributions are encouraged about, but not limited to, (1) scaling of soil—water constitutive laws and their changes in time and space as a consequence of seasonality, climatic changes, anthropogenic changes and pedogenesis; (2) physics of water—repellent soils, and of swelling, dispersive and collapsible soils; (3) constitutive laws for extremely dry conditions and for nearly saturated soils; (4) nonequilibrium and hysteretic behaviours; (5) limits of the Darcian approach in the presence of macroporosity; (6) heat transfer and dispersion; (7) freezing and thawing processes in permafrost; (8) mechanisms of incipient erosion; (9) mathematical functions of constitutive laws and their physical implications; (10) pedotransfer functions and database analysis.

Advancements along those lines will have major implications in many fields, ranging from hydrology, to soil science and soil physics, agriculture and geotechnics.

Soil pollution is a global threat that seriously affects biodiversity in (agro)ecosystems and compromises the quality of food and water. Besides naturally elevated levels of potentially toxic elements and compounds, most contaminants originate from human activities such as industrial processes and mining, poor waste management, unsustainable farming practices and accidents. One of the most important issues in pollution research is the assessment and evaluation of pollution, including assessment and evaluation of the distribution of pollutants in soils, mobility, chemical speciation, as well as evaluation of the probability of soil-plant transfer and accumulation in plants.
This session aims to bring together contributions of all aspects of biogeochemical research related to soil pollution risk assessment, including (but not limited to) assessment of pollution status, geochemical mapping, analysis of element cycling within soils and ecosystems, as well as ecotoxicological considerations.
We warmly welcome presentations of laboratory and field research results as well as theoretical studies. Our aim is to create a community of scientists from multiple disciplines. Young researchers are especially encouraged to submit their contributions.

The weathering of rocks and consequently of the minerals that make them up leads to the formation of soils, containing these primary and secondary minerals that are organized in horizons on top of the parent rock. When these alteration products are transported (erosion) and accumulate in continental, transitional or marine sedimentation environments, they form sediment deposits in aquatic or sub-aerial environments (e.g. fluvial, lacustrine, estuarine, lagoonal, dune). Soils and sediments, although made up of minerals, have different evolutionary processes and consequently have specific geochemical signatures of the processes and conditions inherent in their formation. On the other hand, different Dimensional and Textural Classifications have been established for soils and sediments, which can add some complexity when it comes to defining their study and making comparisons.
In geochemical studies of SOILS and SEDIMENTS, it is essential to define various criteria so that the concentrations obtained can be correctly compared. The sampling methods, the type of material to be analyzed (total sample, coarse fraction, fine fraction), the analytical equipment and even the methodology for preparing the samples for analysis must be taken into account. If these conditions are not the same, it is not appropriate to make comparisons.
In pollution assessment studies, it is essential to know the Natural Geochemical Background Value, and in determining this, the conditions must be established (type of sample, analytical method, sample preparation method) that allow for accurate comparisons and verify the enrichment factor attributed to anthropogenic activity.

It is crucial to focus on critical areas of the biosphere, such as those affected by mining activities, protected habitats, and wetlands. This necessitates a comprehensive risk assessment in such cases. This, in turn, requires monitoring programmes that are not limited in time, as required by the European Green Pact.

Soil contamination is one of the main concerns of today's society. Contaminated soils result from various anthropic activities and soil management practices. Soil health and quality are affected by increased concentrations of potentially hazardous substances (e.g. metals/metalloids, radionuclides and organic compounds) together with other soil degradation factors commonly identified in contaminated areas (e.g. erosion, salinization, organic matter loss). As a result, geochemical and edaphic processes are disturbed, as are water quality, biodiversity, crop production and, consequently, the food chain. The spatial and temporal variability of soil contamination increases the complexity of its assessment and remediation.
Several materials and remediation techniques have been studied, mainly at the laboratory/greenhouse scale, but their success in the field may be limited. The management and remediation of contaminated soils pose significant environmental and socioeconomic challenges that require innovative, multidisciplinary approaches.
This session aims to present the most relevant advances: Soil health and mitigation of contaminating processes; Assessment and mapping of contaminated areas and their risk using classical techniques and digital tools and remote sensing; Evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of techniques and materials (technosols, biochar, nanoparticles and other organic and inorganic amendments) for soil remediation processes and their environmental applications; Modelling the behaviour of potentially hazardous substances and nutrients in contaminated and remediated soils; Monitoring and environmental response of ecosystems after implementation of remediation programmes; Legal frameworks and limitations of soil remediation strategies.
We invite colleagues to present studies and establish new partnerships to develop multidisciplinary strategies that can contribute to the assessment and remediation of contaminated sites.

Soil degradation and contamination is one of the major current problems facing society. The quality and health of soils affect environmental and human health, not only directly in terms of their capacity to retain or immobilise contaminants, both inorganic and organic, but also indirectly in terms of water quality or food security. The role of soils, as well as the mechanisms that can be promoted to deal with their degradation and contamination, represent major challenges, as solutions need to address multifactorial characteristics and be adapted to each context.
The aim of this session is to bring together research studies that address the relationship between soil quality and environmental and human health, through processes, pathways or even temporal effects of exposure to contaminants and their registration in soil. The aim is to integrate and promote work that improves mechanisms for assessing environmental quality and human health with soil indicators, both for agricultural/forestry and urban soils, as well as mitigation or remediation strategies for soils adapted to reduce the risk they pose. Studies focusing on new technologies for assessing and improving soil quality and multidisciplinary approaches to sustainable soil management and its impact on human health will also be highlighted.
We invite colleagues to present studies and form new alliances with cross-cutting, multidisciplinary approaches to propose solutions or ways to identify risks related to soil health and quality of environmental and human health.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of man-made chemicals that have been extensively used worldwide for over 80 years due to their unique chemical properties, such as high stability and resistance to degradation. The widespread use of PFAS has led to pervasive contamination in terrestrial and aquatic environments, creating complex regulatory and environmental management challenges.

This session aims to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of PFAS pollution and to share effective strategies for their management and remediation/mitigation. Hence, we aim to bring together researchers and practitioners from diverse fields, including contaminant hydrogeology, environmental chemistry, toxicology, engineering, and policy, to share their insights on the occurrence, behaviour, and management of PFAS in the environment. We primarily seek contributions that explore the latest advancements in understanding PFAS pollution across different environmental matrices, including surface water, groundwater, and soils.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- The transport and fate of PFAS in terrestrial and aquatic environments,
- Modelling approaches to predict PFAS distribution and transport in various environmental settings,
- Innovative strategies and technologies for the treatment and remediation of PFAS-contaminated water, including drinking water and wastewater,
- Advancements and case studies on the successful application of PFAS remediation/mitigation techniques and their effectiveness in different environmental contexts,
- Ecotoxicological studies,
- Challenges and advancements in regulatory frameworks and policies for managing PFAS pollution, including approaches to identify and mitigate sources of PFAS contamination.

Given the complex nature of PFAS as "forever chemicals" and their ability to partition across different environmental media, this session emphasises the importance of interdisciplinary approaches and collaborative efforts to tackle the multifaceted challenges they present. We welcome studies that utilise laboratory research, field investigations, and modelling efforts, as well as contributions that discuss the implications of PFAS pollution on public and environmental health, ecological integrity, and regulatory landscapes.

The transfer of sediments and associated contaminants plays an important role in catchment ecosystems as they directly influence water quality, habitat conditions, and biogeochemical cycles. Contaminants may include heavy metals, pesticides, nutrients, radionuclides, and various organic, as well as organometallic compounds. The environmental risk posed by sediment-bound contaminants is largely determined by the sources and rate at which sediments are delivered to surface water bodies, the residence time in catchments, lakes, and river systems, as well as biogeochemical transformation processes. However, the dynamics of sediment and contaminant redistribution is highly variable in space and time due to the complex non-linear processes involved. This session thus focuses on sources, transport pathways, storage and re-mobilization, and travel times of sediments and contaminants across temporal and spatial scales, as well as their impact on catchment and freshwater ecosystems.

This session particularly addresses the following issues:
- Delivery rates of sediments and contaminants from various sources (i.e. agriculture, urban areas, mining, industry or natural areas);
- Transport, retention and remobilization of sediments and contaminants in catchments and river reaches;
- Modelling of sediment and contaminant transport on various temporal and spatial scales;
- Biogeochemical controls on contaminant transport and transformation;
- Studies on sedimentary processes and morphodynamics, particularly sediment budgets;
- Linkages between catchment systems and lakes, including reservoirs;
- Analysis of sediment archives to appraise landscape scale variations in sediment and contaminant yield over medium to long time-scales;
- Impacts of sediments and contaminants on floodplain, riparian, hyporheic and other in-stream ecosystems;
- Response of sediment and contaminant dynamics in catchments, lakes and rivers to changing boundary conditions and human actions;
- Assessing human impact on landforms and geomorphological processes in sediment and contaminant transport.

Soil health embraces the importance of soil function to the wider ecosystem in the past, presence, and future. Despite the formulation of such a holistic concept alongside its implementation in legal frameworks (e.g. the EU soil monitoring law), the quantification of soil health has continuing challenges. The first question is how to bound soil health, in essence, i) what is the appropriate reference framework, followed by ii) assessing how soil health should be monitored in a statistically robust way, iii) how should the most appropriate indicators be selected, iv) how do we ensure that indicators are robust to future technological change, and v) how do we integrate indicators into efficient indices? To meet these expectations for soil health evaluation and assessment, we need to establish known indicators and investigate new ones. Transdisciplinary indices are required that integrate biological, chemical and physical aspects which can produce both leading, concurrent and lagging indicators. This will require new measurement techniques including remote sensing of large areas, publicly available datasets of collected soil properties (e.g. LUCAS), and the use of mapping including artificial intelligence to process the plethora of data (e.g. EcoDataCube.eu; SoilGrids). Moreover, it needs to be determined how to integrate such new approaches into established monitoring.
To move from purely a collection of indicators to indicator integration and evolution for different soil types and land covers, we invite presentations on:
• Definition of reference and potential soil health status
• Development of soil health indicator framing in support of the EU soil monitoring law
• Testing new soil health indicators related to the risk of compaction, erosion, reduced biological activity and diversity, contamination and salinization, and depletion of organic matter and nutrients and how it changes
• Formulation of soil health indicators and indices across disciplines; integrating biological, chemical, and physical indicators
• New measurement techniques which enable the efficient monitoring of state and change indicators
• Modelling approaches to bridge the scale gap between point measurements and Pan-European monitoring

The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has emerged as a central issue in ecological and environmental sciences during the last decade. On the regional or local level, the distribution of species and populations is regarded as strongly affected by abiotic elements. On these scales, the interaction of the various environmental factors induces a wide heterogeneity in soil properties and, thus, an aboveground and belowground habitat variation. The pedodiversity has a significant influence on biodiversity, food production, and water transport, therefore a thorough understanding of pedodiversity is helpful in both soil management and soil protection, and can also be applied in the protection of biodiversity. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the spatial distribution characteristics of pedodiversity and its driving factors is crucial for the protection and management of an ecological system. The present session will provide an overview of studies concerning: i) taxonomic pedodiversity based on the quantification of the different soil types (i.e., different soil classes or soil groups, etc.) in a determined area; ii) functional pedodiversity that deal with the functions (behaviour) that soil could perform within different land uses; and iii) genetic pedodiversity concerning the diversity of genetic horizons and their properties also through the use of quantitative pedology tools.

Global glacial retreat is increasingly producing new ice-free areas in various geomorphological settings, from high-mountain valleys to coastal lowlands. The associated losses include decreased provision of meltwater in summer, decreased reflection and cooling, and in some cases increased natural hazards. However, there may be advantages, such as carbon storage in the vegetation, soil development and enlargement of pasture lands in now-exposed glacial sediments. An integrated, multi-disciplinary projection of the future properties and value of deglaciated and deglacierized valleys remains elusive but is necessary as we prepare for an uncertain future under climate change. Most existing research of these systems focuses on quantifying rates of individual processes in deglaciated valleys, mostly as a function of time since deglaciation in a space-for-time approach. Multidisciplinary studies are starting to explore interactions between pedological, ecological, chemical and geomorphic processes, and impacts of drivers other than time are being related to proglacial dynamics as well. Experimental work is starting to directly measure the impact of human interventions to increase functionality and productivity.
We warmly invite contributions of all these types of studies, particularly when they improve methodology, are multidisciplinary or from previously understudied mountain regions – including in the global south.

Modern agroecosystems are facing challenges regarding declining levels of soil health, with potential negative consequences for agricultural productivity. The world population is increasing rapidly, and to feed the increasing population, transformational changes must be introduced to the agriculture system to guarantee food production but without being detrimental to environmental health, therefore achieving sustainability.

Although several definitions are currently accepted, soil health can be described as a multi-dimensional concept that refers to the ability of soil to serve as an ecosystem that sustains plants and animals while supporting human uses such as agriculture and forestry (Lehmann et al., 2020). Decades of evidence has illustrated the agronomic and environmental benefits of agricultural practices such as cover cropping, reduced tillage, and diversified crop rotations (Atwood and Wood, 2021). This session aims to gather new knowledge on how the design of appropriate crop systems, fertilization patterns or agro-forestry management (amongst others) can also affect/control plant-microbe-soil interactions, and its translation into changes in soil health.

The present context of accelerated changes in both climate and land use imposes an unprecedent pressure on a number of vulnerable ecosystems including wetlands, forests and rangelands, in which vegetation closely interacts and coevolves with soils and landforms. Complex interactions between climate, soils and biotic factors are involved in the development of landform-soil-vegetation feedbacks and play an important role in making ecosystems resilient to disturbances. In addition, large shifts in the distribution of vegetation and soils are associated with losses of ecosystem services (including carbon capture), frequently involving thresholds of ecosystem stability and nonlinear responses to both human and climatic pressures. This session will focus on ecogeomorphological and ecohydrological aspects of landscapes (including their connectivity), conservation of soil resources, and the restoration of ecosystem services and functions. We welcome theoretical, modelling, and empirical studies addressing the distribution of vegetation and coevolving soils and landforms, and particularly, contributions with a wide appreciation of the soil erosion-vegetation relationships that rule the formation of landscape-level spatial organization. We also welcome studies describing the implications of these spatial patterns of soils and vegetation for the resilience and stability of ecosystems under the pressure of climate change and/or human disturbances.

The interaction between the soil-plant-atmosphere compartments and human activities is of paramount importance for the sustainable management and preservation of ecosystem functions and services. The functionality and services of terrestrial ecosystems are threatened by global climate change and human activities. The complexity and comprehensiveness of the impacts have so far proven challenging to assess due to the limitations of simplified experimental approaches and long-term observations, which often focus on a limited number of response variables.
Experimental systems such as lysimeters or ecotrons provide continuous, high-resolution and high-quality observations of detailed time series, which are crucial for a more accurate determination of the Earth's ecosystem services and functions and for promoting interdisciplinary ecosystem research.
This session will mainly focus on the diversity of ecosystem research using research platforms of lysimeters and ecotrons. We would also like to address the challenges of modelling ecosystem processes, comparison of metrics with other in situ instruments, upscaling approaches from such platforms to larger scales, validation studies (e.g. remote sensing), but also new developments in the field of lysimetry and further development of processing algorithms for interpretation of high temporal resolution lysimeter/ecotron weight data. We welcome contributions that (1) present novelties in the field of lysimeters, (2) assess and compare the functioning and services of terrestrial ecosystems, particularly in relation to climate change, (3) focus on water and nutrient transport processes (4) and greenhouse gases within the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum, (5) develop new techniques for the analysis of lysimeter and ecotron observations, (6) include ecosystem or hydrological modelling approaches using in situ observations from lysimeters or ecotrons.

Understanding ecosystems and geoscience at the relevant scales is crucial to push scientific frontiers and develop new hypothesis. The last three decades and alongside with the technological progress, analytical and experimental settings were more and more fine tuned to gain a better understanding of natural processes within and across all earth science disciplines. New insights were gained on a multitude of geosphere interactions. Hereby the small-scale interaction plays an important role in answering fundamental questions in i.e., understanding transport phenomena and governing mechanisms of different physical and chemical processes in porous media, enhance understanding of organic matter dynamics in soil systems or study transient processes between roots, minerals and microbes. Additionally, in recent years microfluidic chip applications have evolved towards in-situ sensing -or environmental monitoring platforms for contaminants, nutrients or microorganisms.
Micro engineered systems such as porous media models, microfluidic chips or 3D printed micro reactors bare the great potential to simulate less accessible environments, particularly at the relevant reactive scale. The full potential in various branches of natural sciences is yet to be explored.
Therefore, this session aims to collect and connect various disciplines of natural sciences who make use of microfluidics for process understanding. But moreover, to inspire each other and create new innovative experimental setups for their own applications.
We encourage contributions focusing on the following applications of microfluidic chips:
• understand microbial and fungal dynamics in soil analogs
• study contaminant behavior in soils and groundwater aquifers at the relevant scale
• microbial dynamics at the soil/air interface
• AI- suported image analysis to enhance subsurface process understanding of microbe and contaminant dynamics

The Critical Zone (CZ), encompassing the Earth's outer layer from the top of the vegetation canopy to the bottom of the circulating groundwater, is essential for sustaining life and maintaining environmental health. Understanding this complex zone requires a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach that transcends disciplinary and national boundaries, bridging gaps between short-term and long-term environmental processes. This session will highlight CZ science, CZ methodologies, and the collaborative efforts of CZ networks from around the world. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Innovative techniques in CZ research and monitoring, including contributions involving observations, modeling, or integration of the two; Advances in understanding soils, hydrology, and biogeochemical cycling within the CZ; Characterization of CZ structure as it varies with depth and environmental factors; Impacts of stressors and environmental change on the CZ; Policy or management implications of CZ research; Development of CZ science networks; and Case studies of successful international CZ collaborations.

Wildfires are a worldwide phenomenon with many environmental, social, and economic implications, which are expected to escalate as a consequence of climate change and land abandonment, management, and planning, further promoting land degradation and decreasing ecosystem services supply.
The current situation demands from the scientific community the study of wildfire effects on the ecosystems and the development of integrated tools for pre- and post-fire land management practices that reduce the vulnerability to wildfires and their impacts. However, this research urges the attention not only from researchers, but also from stakeholders and policy-makers all over the world, since basic resources such as raw materials, water, and soils as well as habitats are at stake.
This session aims at gathering researchers on the effects of wildfires on ecosystems, from wildfire prevention to post-fire mitigation. We kindly invite laboratory, field, and/or modelling studies involving the following topics:
i. prescribed and/or experimental fires;
ii. fire severity and burn severity;
iii. fire effects on vegetation, soil and water;
iv. post-fire hydrological and erosive response;
v. post-fire management and mitigation;
vi. socio-economic studies on pre- and post-fire land management;
vii. fire risk assessment and modelling.

The forest floor is the most reactive part of forest soils with much faster biogeochemical turnover than the mineral soil. Owing to its high reactivity and to its position as interface between the aboveground and belowground parts of the ecosystem, it is more responsive to climatic or management changes of forest ecosystems than the mineral soil. Currently, temperate European forests undergo significant changes, mainly induced by climate change, eutrophication, species composition and management. Negative consequences for forest floor functioning are documented, potentially impacting forest soils as a whole. Yet, forest floors are often not considered adequately and therefore, we are neither in a position to assess the current state of functioning or predict future developments, nor can we estimate consequences for mineral soils and forest ecosystem health.
With this session we encourage interdisciplinary exchange addressing the causal links between controls, properties, and functioning of forest floors. We aim to elucidate forest floor vulnerability to climate change and to identify biological, chemical, morphological and physical forest floor properties, serving as indicators for forest soil health. We encourage contributions that integrate multiple scientific disciplines and approaches to draw a holistic picture of forest floor functioning at different levels from micro, to soil profile to the landscape scale.

Anthropogenic soil compaction is one of the main soil degradation processes in agriculture and forestry worldwide. Steadily increasing masses of machinery and their intensive use in agriculture and forestry increase the risk of harmful soil compaction, especially under unfavourable soil conditions.
Once a soil is compacted, reduced water infiltration, impaired plant and root growth and lower biological activity occur, whereas surface runoff, soil erosion and nutrient leaching increase. Among others, this influences the yield potential and yield security as well as the resilience to extreme weather events due to climate change.

Despite its importance, soil compaction receives relatively low awareness compared to other soil degradation processes such as soil erosion, which might be attributed to a reduced visibility of soil compaction. Deep ruts of the tyres may be recognisable at the soil surface, but surface smoothening by tillage and seedbed preparation will remove them. The effects of soil compaction in deeper soil layers are mostly invisible at all.

Within this session, we will focus on all aspects of soil compaction in agriculture and forests. This includes all methodological aspect (field work, laboratory analysis, sensor development, statistical analysis, and modelling), all spatial scales (from pedon to regional to continental scale) and all temporal scales (past, present, and future). Furthermore, applications and solutions for reducing soil compaction in agriculture and forestry are very welcome.

All researchers involved in soil compaction are warmly invited to attend this session.

Unsustainable land management practices and a changing climate are causing the degradation and desertification of large areas of land. The reduction of the capacity of the land to maintain vegetation, produce food and sequester soil carbon is affecting the livelihoods and traditions of local communities. This session aims to contribute to the reversal of desertification through the exchange of knowledge and experiences on the assessment and mitigation of desertification. We welcome studies that facilitate the identification of negative and positive land management hotspots, for the prioritization of interventions and the assessment and out-scaling of success stories. Particularly welcome are assessment studies that integrate multiple data types, such as satellite-derived data, ground-based monitoring and sampling, socio-economic surveys and narrative analysis, and different working scale. At the same time, we encourage presentations on experimental research studies for the development and testing of innovative technologies for combatting desertification in degraded land. This session will also introduce the establishment of an international Community of Practice and Knowledge on desertification assessment and innovations for sustainable land management, which you are welcome to join.

Agrogeophysics harnesses geophysical methods such as ground-penetrating radar, electrical imaging, seismic,... from hand-held over drone to satellite-borne, to characterize patterns or processes in the soil-plant continuum of interest for agronomic management. These methods help develop sustainable agricultural practices by providing minimally-invasive, spatially consistent, multi-scale, and temporally-resolved information of processes in agro- ecosystems that is inaccessible by traditional monitoring techniques. The aim of this session is to feature applications of geophysical methods in agricultural research and/or show methodologies to overcome their inherent limitations and challenges. We welcome contributions monitoring soil or plant properties and states revealing information relevant for agricultural management; studies developing and using proximal or remote sensing techniques for mapping or monitoring soil-water-plant interactions; work focused on bridging the scale gap between these multiple techniques; or work investigating pedophysical relationships to better understand laboratory-scale links between sensed properties and soil variables of interest. Submissions profiting on data fusion, utilizing innovative modeling tools for interpretation, and demonstrating novel acquisition or processing techniques are encouraged.

Organic farming is based on the natural cycles of energy and nutrients, and relies on the use of crop rotations, crop residues, compost and green manure. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) agrees to define the “Organic agriculture as a production system that sustains the health of soils, ecosystems and people. It relies on ecological processes, biodiversity and cycles adapted to local conditions, rather than the use of inputs with adverse effects".
This Scientific Session invites you to contribute with your experience in organic farming in relation to soil changes (biota, water, mineral and organic matter, erosion), soil productivity, plant protection, healthy food, food quality or socio-economic aspects. Studies focused on optimal energy efficiency, carbon and water footprint (with an emphasis in green and grey water), greenhouse gasses (GHG) and soil nutrient balancing as indicators of sustainable agricultural practices, are also welcomed. Research conducted on different continents will be shown in order to know the sustainability of organic agriculture under different environmental, social and economic conditions. All these studies could provide robust scientific basis for governmental agricultural policies development and decision tools for stakeholders.

Soil management practices in agriculture have strong impacts on the environment, for example through the construction of terraces, land levelling works and deep tillage on slopes. Cultivation causes important effects in the soil system, influencing its physical, hydrological, chemical and biological properties through different soil management techniques.
Moreover, land degradation (e.g. soil erosion, shallow landslides) triggered by climate changes such as intense rainfall events, frequently affects crops in sloping terrains, creating severe economic damages and causing the loss of ecosystem services.
This session, proposed within the framework of the PNRR-NODES project (funded by the Italian MUR), will present the most recent scientific research on the interactions between land degradation (e.g. soil erosion, shallow landslides, compaction, loss of organic matter) and soil management practices in vineyards located in sloping areas, covering a wide spectrum of technologies, from field and laboratory measurements to remote sensing techniques, modelling approaches and mitigation measures. The main objective is to create synergy among scientists of different expertise and skills to discuss traditional and innovative methodological approaches to assess land degradation in agroecosystems with particular emphasis on vineyards.
For this session we encourage contributions from diverse fields, including:
• proximal and remote sensing for measurement and monitoring the effects of soil management practices,
• model implementation, parameterisation, uncertainties,
• simulation of the effects of soil management changes and climate changes.
Contributions concerning mitigation measures, such as innovative land management practices, that may help farmers and policy makers in the achievement of Land Degradation Neutrality are also welcome.

Emerging technologies aimed to improve soil productivity (e.g., irrigation with nanobubble-enriched water, novel soil amendments, and soil management strategies), may help solve some of the most urgent challenges resulting from imperfect land use and management.
Most studies on the topic focus on the traditional agronomic output (quality and quantitative parameters of crops) and often lack understanding of the associated effects on a more fundamental biogeochemical and soil physical level. Such an understanding, however, is essential to better understand and further improve these technologies when macroscopic agronomic effects seem to be contraindicatory.
This session will cover novel ideas and technologies (not regular biochar) at an early stage that envision improved soil productivity through improved fertility, wettability, aeration, water storage, and more. The aim is an interdisciplinary view of the effects of such technologies on the soil-plant system at different scales. Focused fundamental laboratory studies, as well as applied case studies and field trials, are welcome.

Ecosystem functions, such as the nutrient cycling of soils and emissions of greenhouse gases, are highly dependent on the bacterial and fungal communities in soil and plants. These communities determine the ecosystem services these ecosystems are providing. Molecular techniques, such as meta-barcoding and functional metagenomics provide emerging tools to understand ecosystem services and ecosystem functioning alike. There are many open questions on soil functioning; for example, we do not understand the interactions between soil microbial diversity and soil functioning. Also, the role of legacy responses and the long-term impacts of disturbances on below-ground processes are not well documented. The proposed session aims to attract scientists from metagenomic research as well as from the ecosystem functioning and ecosystem service communities to bridge the current gap between metagenomics of plants and soils and ecosystem services. The work is associated with the Biodiversa+-funded MicroEco and the EU Eco2adapt projects.

This session offers an opportunity to present studies or professional works regarding irrigated agriculture, either with disciplinary or multidisciplinary approaches, to provide solutions for the society's challenges in the XXI century, in the following areas:
• The resilience of irrigated areas at different spatial scales, mainly when water and soil are limiting factors.
• Estimation of crop transpiration/crop water requirement, even considering the possibility to apply regulated water deficit conditions.
• Coupling natural and human systems where ground and surface water and land are limiting resources for irrigation
• Safety in marginal water use in irrigated agriculture. Use of irrigation water from different non-conventional water sources
• Traditional, novel, and transitional technologies for irrigation management, control and practical application.
• Digital irrigation: application of available remote and proximal sensed data to tackle current and future irrigation problems.
• Improving the integration of climate change scenarios and weather forecasts into agro-hydrological models and decision support systems to improve decisions in irrigation management and safe surface water-groundwater interactions.

Posters and oral communications are available. Likewise, a Special Issue is foreseen

Black soils provide many important ecosystem services to human societies. Their high organic matter content and high fertility make black soils among the most productive soils in the world, serving as the world’s food basket. As a result, about 1/3 world’s black soils has been cultivated, in some regions for hundreds of years. Their high soil carbon content makes them an important natural carbon stock, potentially contributing to climate change mitigation. Broadly speaking, black soils (Mollisols)—including Phaeozems, Chernozems and Kastanozems—distribute mostly in the temperate regions of Eurasia (Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia, and China), North America (USA and Canada) and South America (Argentina). We invite presentations focusing on all aspects of black soils research, including but not limited to, soil genesis, development history and critical soil forming factors; carbon and greenhouse-gas dynamics; degradation, protection and restoration; soil health monitoring and assessment; and sustainable use, conservation and management, from all relevant disciplines (including soil physics, chemistry and biology, and social sciences) and any methodologies (observational, experimental and modeling/theoretical). We hope that presentations and discussions in this session will provide opportunity for us to understand and synthesize the similarities and differences of black soils in different regions of the world in terms of their formation, development, restoration practices, and conservation approaches.

Agriculture is pivotal in the European economy and the global food supply. Europe is a significant producer of diverse crops, contributing significantly to feeding the world's population. The quality and characteristics of agricultural products are closely linked to the specific environmental conditions in which they are grown. These environmental factors, including climate, soil, and water, can vary significantly across regions and are increasingly influenced by the challenges of climate change.
Understanding the spatial and temporal variability of environmental factors is crucial for managing and preserving agricultural landscapes and adapting to climate change's current and future impacts.
This requires a deep understanding of plants’ mechanisms for acclimation, keeping in mind that functional traits (e.g., phenology,etc.) can be indicators and proxies of plant status, plasticity and resilience. Moreover, it involves applied research and technological innovation in agriculture, including the use of sensors to monitor environmental variables, remote sensing and drones for crop monitoring, predictive models for yield and disease, and advanced methods to study nutrient cycles and soil health.
Furthermore, growing public awareness of the importance of ecosystem health and sustainability has led to adopting quantitative approaches to understand the link between agricultural practices and ecosystem services, which are crucial for achieving long-term environmental goals. Agroecological approaches, such as cover cropping, organic amendments, and integrated pest management, are being increasingly adopted to enhance biodiversity, soil health, water and nutrient retention, and resilience to climate change.
On these bases, the session will delve into:
- Quantifying and Spatially Modeling Environmental Factors: Examining the complex interplay of climate, soil, and water and their influence on plant growth, yield, and quality.
- Agricultural Resilience to Climate Change: Exploring the adaptability of agricultural systems in the face of a changing climate and identifying strategies for adaptation and mitigation.
- Sustainable Agricultural Practices and Ecosystem Services: Analyzing the impact of diverse agricultural practices on soil and water quality, biodiversity, and related ecosystem services.
- Precision Agriculture and Technological Innovation: Utilizing advanced technologies to optimize resource use, improve crop management, and enhance sustainability.

The Mediterranean region is warming 20% faster than the global average. Impacts will place additional pressure on already stressed ecosystems as well as on vulnerable economies and societies. The agricultural sector is particularly affected by this transformation, both because it bears the impact of climate change and because it is tasked with contributing to its mitigation.
Carbon farming is the new frontier of sustainable agricultural systems to mitigate climate change through the management of the entire carbon supply chain at the farm level, including pools, flows, and GHG fluxes. This involves the management of both land and livestock, all pools of carbon in soils, materials and vegetation, plus fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH4), as well as nitrous oxide (N2O).
Despite progress in this field, a significant gap remains between scientific knowledge and the practical implementation of techniques that are to be adopted by farmers and supported by policymakers and practitioners.
The aim of this session is to present solutions in this field, and highlight application-, renovation- and transition-oriented insights for effective carbon farming implementation in Mediterranean climates.
We welcome contributions on:
- Carbon farming applications, including specific examples from livestock to field management sectors as well as more comprehensive approaches across the agro-livestock supply chain.
- Ways of monitoring (directly and indirectly) carbon farming applications, including but not limited to modelling, proximal and remote sensing technologies, soil mapping, GHG flux measurements, with particular emphasis on cost-effective techniques in both short and long-term.
- Verification on the long-term sustainability of carbon farming initiatives at both field and territorial level, including economic, socio-cultural and environmental aspects.
This will contribute to a lively discussion on how carbon farming can be achieved in the field and scale-up at the regional or continental area in order to support climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Modern agriculture has succeeded in increasing productivity to meet rising demand. In this context, it is now an important task to manage soils sustainably in order to maintain or enhance soil fertility and soil quality for food production, while also providing ecosystem services through agricultural land. Accordingly, it is necessary to identify and quantify the risks of soil degradation and to develop contemporary and locally adapted soil protection and restoration strategies, as well as tools to improve soil quality. Substantial impact of research results and technological solutions should be achieved by involving technicians, farmers and policy makers to ensure that the tools and approaches provided by researchers meet the practical needs of all stakeholders.
This session will cover all aspects of soil conservation, soil remediation, and fertilization strategies in agriculture at different spatial scales. This also includes approaches to support decision-making processes and to promote the uptake of research results in agricultural practice through agricultural stakeholders. We, therefore, particularly welcome contributions in the following topics:
ii) Development of innovative soil improvement measures, soil remediation and fertilization strategies, supported by smart and innovative agricultural techniques and digital decision support tools.
ii) Development of methodologies (e.g., field work, laboratory analysis, sensor development, statistical analysis, algorithms, and models) for assessing the soil quality status and erosion processes.
iii) Monitoring and modelling studies investigating agricultural system approaches to enhance the quality of soil and water for food production under different environmental conditions and scales.
iv) Socioeconomic studies on soil and water resource use and conservation policies.
We warmly invite all researchers working in the field of soil and water conservation and soil restoration to participate in this session. We particularly encourage the TUdi project consortium (EU Horizon 2020 grant agreement no. 101000224) to attend this session.

Deadwood is a multifunctional and dynamic feature of forest ecosystems, both terrestrial and aquatic, as it is a hotspot of biodiversity, carbon and forest soil functioning. In particular deadwood has a positive effect on soil health by improving basic properties that are important for the structure and diversity of soil microorganisms. Forest resilience thus can be improved when deadwood supports tree growth through increased water retention, nutrient availability and soil organic carbon stocks especially when stressed by e.g. drought. Yet resilience can be reduced when deadwood heightens the risk and intensity of forest fires, pathogens, and pests. To evaluate deadwood’s contribution to climate resilience via biodiversity, soil functions, (soil) water dynamics, carbon fluxes and fire, we need a better understanding of deadwood quantities and characteristics in forests, underlying faunal and microbial biogeochemical dynamics, and wood decomposition from the canopy to subsoil. Particular interest is placed on the deadwood-soil interface under different environmental conditions and management regimes.

The aim of this session is to illuminate the complex role of deadwood in forest ecosystems by addressing its full range of functions, discussing methods for interdisciplinary deadwood research and deriving implications for sustainable and climate mitigating forest management. We are looking for contributions on classification and quantification of deadwood stocks at different scales, deadwood fauna, fungi, and microbial community dynamics; decomposition processes, the deadwood-soil interface, the potential of deadwood for carbon sequestration (under different environmental conditions), the hydrological effects of deadwood and forest fire risk. Exploratory studies as well as experimental or modelling approaches are welcome.

Methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are among the most important greenhouse gases (GHG) after carbon dioxide (CO2) in accelerating global warming and deserve special attention as their concentrations increase. Forest ecosystems play an important role in the exchange of GHGs with the atmosphere. It has been shown that not only soils but also trees play a significant role in the net exchange of CH4 and N2O in forests. Trees can contribute to ecosystem exchange by uptake and transport of soil-produced CH4 and N2O to the atmosphere, by in situ production and consumption of both gases in plant tissues, and by modifying carbon and nitrogen turnover in adjacent soils. However, the contribution of these individual processes to the net ecosystem GHG exchange is still unclear and appears to depend on many aspects such as tree species (tree traits), forest ecosystem type, environmental parameters and seasonal dynamics. Soil-tree-atmosphere interactions play a crucial role in controlling the global budget of these gases.

This session aims to bring together scientists working on CH4 and N2O cycles in forest ecosystems across different climatic and hydrological ranges and scales, which is crucial for improving our understanding of CH4 and N2O exchange in forest ecosystems. We welcome contributions on production and consumption processes and mechanisms in soils and plant tissues, as well as on gas transport processes in the soil-tree-atmosphere continuum. Gas flux measurements from forest soils, cryptogams, tree stems, leaves or canopies with chamber systems or integrated ecosystem approaches (flux tower with eddy covariance, satellite or modelling) would be highly appreciated. Methodological studies closely related to the investigation of CH4 and N2O exchange in forest ecosystems are also welcome.

Solicited author:
Prof. Daniel Epron (University of Kyoto, Japan)

Managed agricultural ecosystems (grassland and cropland) are an important source and/or sink for greenhouse gases (GHG) as well as for reactive trace gases. Representative measurements and modelling under typical conditions as well as for potential mitigation options are necessary as a basis for recommendations to policy makers and farmers.
Due to the simultaneous influence of various environmental drivers and management activities (e.g. fertilizer application, harvest, grazing) the flux patterns are often complex and difficult to attribute to individual drivers. Moreover, management related mitigation options may often result in trade-offs between different GHG or between emission of GHG and reactive gases like NH3, NOx, or VOCs. To investigate these interactions, the session addresses experimentalists and modelers working on carbon and nitrogen cycling processes and related fluxes on plot, field, landscape, and regional scale. It is open to a wide range of studies including the development and application of new devices, methods, and model approaches as well as field observations and process studies. Particularly welcome are studies on multiple gases and on the full carbon, nitrogen or GHG budgets. We also encourage contributions about the applicability and overall potential of mitigation options.

Sustainable agriculture and forestry face the challenges of lacking scalable solutions and sufficient data for monitoring vegetation structural and physiological traits, vegetation (a)biotic stress, and the impacts of environmental conditions and management practices on ecosystem productivity. Remote sensing from spaceborne, unmanned/manned airborne, and proximal sensors provides unprecedented data sources for agriculture and forestry monitoring across scales. The synergy of hyperspectral, multispectral, thermal, LiDAR, or microwave data can thoroughly identify vegetation stress symptoms in near real-time and combined with modeling approaches to forecast ecosystem productivity. This session welcomes a wide range of contributions on remote sensing for sustainable agriculture and forestry including, but not limited to: (1) the development of novel sensing instruments and technologies; (2) the quantification of ecosystem energy, carbon, water, and nutrient fluxes across spatial and temporal scales; (3) the synergy of multi-source and multi-modal data; (4) the development and applications of machine learning, radiative transfer modeling, or their hybrid; (5) the integration of remotely sensed plant traits to assess ecosystem functioning and services; (6) the application of remote sensing techniques for vegetation biotic and abiotic stress detection; and (7) remote sensing to advance nature-based solutions in agriculture and forestry for climate change mitigation. This session is inspired by the cost action program, Pan-European Network of Green Deal Agriculture and Forestry Earth Observation Science (PANGEOS, https://pangeos.eu/), which aims to leverage state-of-the-art remote sensing technologies to advance field phenotyping workflows, precision agriculture/forestry practices and larger-scale operational assessments for a more sustainable management of Europe’s natural resources.

Agriculture is the largest consumer of water worldwide and at the same time irrigation is a sector where huge differences between modern technology and traditional practices do exist. Furthermore, reliable and organized data about water withdrawals for agricultural purposes are generally lacking worldwide, thus making irrigation the missing variable to close the water budget over anthropized basins. As a result, building systems for improving water use efficiency in agriculture is not an easy task, even though it is an immediate requirement of human society for sustaining the global food security, rationally managing the resource and reducing causes of poverties, migrations and conflicts among states, which depend on trans-boundary river basins. Climate changes and increasing human pressure together with traditional wasteful irrigation practices are enhancing the conflictual problems in water use also in countries traditionally rich in water. Hence, saving irrigation water improving irrigation efficiency on large areas with modern techniques is an urgent action to do. In fact, it is well known that agriculture uses large volumes of water with low irrigation efficiency, accounting in Europe for around 24% of the total water use, with peak of 80% in the Southern Mediterranean part and may reach the same percentage in Mediterranean non-EU countries (EEA, 2009; Zucaro 2014). North Africa region has the lowest per-capita freshwater resource availability among all Regions of the world (FAO, 2018).
Several studies have recently explored the possibility of monitoring irrigation dynamics and by optimizing irrigation water management to achieve precision farming exploiting remote sensing information combined with ground data and/or water balance modelling.
In this session, we will focus on: the use of remote sensing data to estimate irrigation volumes and timing; management of irrigation using hydrological modeling combined with satellite data; improving irrigation water use efficiency based on remote sensing vegetation indices, hydrological modeling, satellite soil moisture or land surface temperature data; precision farming with high resolution satellite data or drones; farm and irrigation district irrigation management; improving the performance of irrigation schemes; estimates of irrigation water requirements from ground and satellite data; ICT tools for real-time irrigation management with remote sensing and ground data coupled with hydrological modelling.

A transformation towards sustainable agriculture is essential to secure food for both current and future generations while restoring natural resources. Agricultural productivity today faces multiple challenges, including climate change, water scarcity, limited access to essential inputs, socio-economic disparities, and rising global demand for agricultural products. Additionally, agriculture must play a pivotal role in mitigating climate change, reducing environmental pollution, and preserving biodiversity. Addressing these complex demands necessitates a comprehensive evaluation of alternative land management practices across local to global scales, with a focus on assessing entire agricultural production systems rather than isolated products.
This session will address the modeling of agricultural systems in the context of global change, focusing on challenges related to climate change adaptation and mitigation, sustainable intensification, and the environmental impacts of agricultural production. We invite contributions on methodological approaches, data innovations, assessments of climate impacts and adaptation strategies, environmental consequences, greenhouse gas mitigation, and economic evaluations.

Agricultural activities are one of the major contributors to trace gases in the atmosphere. Besides the contribution to methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), ammonia (NH₃), ground-level ozone (O₃), and various volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are triggered by agricultural activities. These trace gases play significant roles in biogeochemical cycles, affecting air quality and interplaying with climate change. Understanding the dynamics of the source and sink processes of these trace gases—from agricultural soils, crops, and the impact of diverse management practices—is essential for developing effective strategies or practices to mitigate their environmental impact.
This session, " Agricultural Trace Gas Dynamics and Air Quality: Innovative Approaches and Emerging Insights," aims to showcase the latest research and technological advancements in measuring and modeling trace gas exchanges and concentrations within agricultural ecosystems.
The session will welcome the following topics, but not limited to, (1) the impact of different agricultural management practices, such as tillage, mineral/organic fertilization, irrigation, crop rotation, and livestock management, on trace gas concentrations, emissions and depositions from a range of agroecosystems across the globe; (2) cutting-edge methodologies, such as ecosystem-scale monitoring, automated chamber systems, remote sensing technologies, and novel analytical tools for detecting VOCs and other trace gases; (3) the use of state-of-the-art modeling techniques, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, to extrapolate and predict gas dynamics patterns under various environmental and management scenarios; (4) challenges and opportunities associated with reducing the environmental footprint of agriculture.
We seek to bring together researchers, policymakers, and industry practitioners, especially the early career researchers, to join and contribute their fresh perspectives and ideas to this important discussion. Expected outcomes include fostering new collaborations, identifying research gaps on agricultural trace gas management and the challenges of climate change and air quality, and developing actionable recommendations for sustainable agricultural practices that may improve soil health, air quality, and global food security.

Soil is the largest carbon (C) reservoir in terrestrial ecosystems and soil organic carbon (SOC) is the basis for soil’s biodiversity, health and fertility. Soil health is directly linked to the delivery of ecosystem services, including crop yields, and is directly determined by the concentration in stable soil organic carbon, and the availability of raw organic material. A sustainable management of ecosystems to enhance both, soil and subsoil organic C storage is one strategy to mitigate climate change and to provide soil-related ecosystem services. So far, sustainability of land and soil management, with special emphasis to agriculture, and long-term C sequestration are critically dependent on short- and long-term management, including the input of other nutrients, soil intrinsic characteristics and land use.
Thus, achieving sustainability in the long run requires the knowledge base on drivers and processes controlling soil C storage and cycling.

This session will provide knowledge about key mechanisms and proxies controlling physico-chemical and soil biota dynamics of soil carbon (both organic and inorganic) and other nutrients, and related soil health traits and definitions, in order to promote C sequestration in soil, and enhance the sustainability of agricultural systems and its relationship with natural systems.

Studies, opinions and other contributions in this session will aim to a wide range of topics related to SOC and soil inorganic carbon (SIC) and the relationship between them or with soil biota and non biological factors.

These topics may also include soil fertility, provision of ecosystem services, and computation of their economic values, and their changes. Contributions on the management strategies in agricultural and natural systems are also welcome, and will be summarised to help the translation of scientific knowledge into policy frameworks.

Types of contribution appreciated include, but are not limited to, definitive and intermediate results; project outcomes; proposal of methods or sampling and modelling strategies, and the assessment of their effectiveness; projection of previous results at the light of climate change and climatic extremes; literature surveys, reviews, meta-analysis; and opinions. These works will be evaluated at the light of the organization of a special issue in an impacted journal.

The spatial organization and structure of soils, known as the soil architecture, has traditionally been assumed to be stable over timescales relevant to soil functions, such as carbon, nutrient, and water cycling. However, this assumption does not always hold, especially under biotic activity, changing land use and shifting climate conditions. Dynamics of pore structure and soil aggregates and redistribution of soil material through processes such as mixing and erosion continuously reshape the soil architecture over short to long timescales, affecting the functioning of soils. To comprehensively understand soil functionality in a changing world, it is imperative to view soils as dynamic, four-dimensional systems.

This session invites presentations that study soil dynamics using numerical and statistical modelling. The focus will be on the development of model-based representations, or digital twins, of soil systems to study soil processes, dynamics, and functions from the pore to the landscape scale and from diurnal dynamics to millennial evolution. By bringing together modellers and models that work on different spatiotemporal scales, we aim at synergies between soil hydrology, soil physics, soil geography and soil ecology to develop holistic models that consider soils and their functions as dynamic systems.

Observations are the cornerstone of understanding hydrological processes, providing essential data for model development and validation. However, the integration of monitoring strategies and measurement tools into data mining and modeling remains a significant challenge in vadose zone hydrology. To address this, advancements in technologies such as remote sensing, high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, digital twins, and the Internet of Things are crucial. This session aims to explore the integration of diverse observational approaches across different spatial scales to enhance our understanding of vadose zone processes. By combining advanced technologies, soil processes can be simulated and predicted at large spatial scales, enabling the evaluation of global warming, soil contamination, salinization, erosion, and land use change impacts on soil and water resources in agro-ecosystems (i.e., arable land and grassland, orchards, forest, agro-forestry, urban fabric).
We invite contributions on the following topics:
• Innovative observation techniques and technologies: New methods for measuring soil variables and fluxes (e.g., soil moisture) and other vadose zone physical, chemical, and hydraulic properties.
• Data mining and analysis: Advanced techniques for extracting meaningful information from large and complex datasets.
• Model development and integration: Coupling of models with various observation data sources to improve predictions.
• Applications and case studies: Demonstration on how integrated observations and models can address specific hydrological challenges to evaluate the impact of natural and human disturbances (extreme weather events exacerbated by global warming, soil contamination, salinization, erosion, and land use change) on soil and water resources.
• Challenges and future directions: Discussions on the limitations and opportunities for future research in vadose zone hydrology.
By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and sharing knowledge, this session will significantly advance our understanding and management of the vadose zone, a critical region in the Earth's subsurface that controls the flow of water, nutrients, and pollutants.

Soil resources are globally threatened and require our proactive adaptation to ensure sustainable and resilient land and ecosystem management practices. The complexity and variability of soils limit our capabilities to predict soil functionality and challenge the development of adequate soil management and land use strategies. In particular, soils are permanently under pressure and also highly affected by climate change and extreme weather events. It often remains unclear how environmental changes as well as management strategies influence over a broad spectrum of spatio-temporal scales various soil functions such as nutrient cycling, carbon sequestration, water quality, biodiversity and agricultural productivity.

The biogeochemical and physical modelling of soils allows unravelling the complex multi-scale dynamic interactions between biotic and abiotic soil components underlying the emergence of soil structure and functions. Soil models also deepen our understanding of soil physical and biogeochemical processes by integrating sparse data that can only be collected at limited spatial and temporal scales. However, models' outputs can only reflect the hypotheses underlying them.

Within the perspective of soil health and resilience, we would like to question and explore in this session the performance of current data-driven, theoretical, and mechanistic modelling approaches in response to extreme weather events in particular. We invite inter- and multi-disciplinary contributions, ranging for instance from models of microbiome interactions in soil pores to the modelling of agroecosystems and land-use types.

This session aims to advance knowledge transfer in soil science through evidence synthesis methodologies and results. Research papers accumulate, and piles of original data and legacy data are reused to test and verify hypotheses and try to solve a vast array of issues scientifically. Evidence synthesis is the process of collecting, evaluating, and integrating multiple pieces of research, data or information to build a comprehensive understanding of a specific issue, or research question. Our objective is to provide a more robust and complete view of the evidence available. The synthesis of evidence is crucial in soil science and provides a benefit for everyone when it comes into the hands of policy stakeholders and decision-makers. The most renewed approaches to evidence synthesis include Systematic reviews and Meta-analyses. The latter type of analysis is sometimes inappropriately used for studies that do not use statistical techniques correctly to combine the results of multiple studies to estimate the overall effect of an intervention or phenomenon.
We invite contributions on the following topics: Systematic reviews and meta-analyses in soil science,
Novel approaches to evidence synthesis in agro-environmental science, Case studies demonstrating the impact of evidence synthesis, and the role of evidence synthesis in addressing global soil challenges.
The expected outcomes of this session are to strengthen networking opportunities for participants to collaborate on future projects. This session is part of the broader framework of the soil system science division and aligns with EGU’s mission to promote geosciences and foster interdisciplinary collaboration. By focusing on evidence synthesis and education in soil science, we aim to address critical aspects of knowledge transfer and societal impact.

Supported by growing observational data and computational power, as well as success stories from other research fields, data-driven methods are increasingly used in soil and biogeosciences. New artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) methods enhance our ability to describe soils and model soil variables. However, their introduction has been accompanied by overpromises and challenges, such as the relative data sparsity in soil science compared to other biogeoscience domains. In this session, we would like to address the following questions:

• How can AI support soil and land resource inventories, leading to better decision-making in land management? What role can AI play in capturing climate and vegetation dynamics' impacts on soil properties?

• To what extent can data-driven soil research complement traditional hypothesis-driven approaches by generating new hypotheses for observed patterns?

• How do data-driven, ML-based approaches compare with mechanistic models in predicting soil properties and understanding soil processes? What are the benefits and challenges of hybrid models that combine data-driven insights with mechanistic knowledge? How can we better communicate challenges of data-driven research, such as uncertainty quantification, especially when extrapolating beyond training data?

• What new remote sensing data or covariates are emerging as valuable tools in predictive soil modeling? For instance, can Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data effectively predict soil organic carbon (SOC) and other soil properties, and how do bare soil observations enhance these predictions?

• In what ways can we use foundational Earth models to improve soil predictions and simulate scenarios like land use changes and climate impacts? Can these models help scale local research to regional or global levels, enhancing predictions and supporting sustainable land management?

• How can we leverage large language models (LLMs) to enhance data analysis and improve research efficiency in soil science? Can LLMs synthesize complex soil data to provide insights for sustainable land management?

This session encourages contributions from various research fields, especially case studies where soil scientists, computer scientists, agronomists, and data scientists collaborate to solve soil-related problems. We invite abstracts on the practical use of AI in soil research, including successes, failures, and future ideas.

Spatial soil information is fundamental for environmental modelling and land management. Spatial representation (maps) of soil attributes (both laterally and vertically) and of soil-landscape processes are needed at a scale appropriate for environmental management. The challenge is to develop explicit, quantitative, and spatially realistic models of the soil-landscape continuum. Modern advances in soil sensing, geospatial technologies, and spatial statistics are enabling exciting opportunities to efficiently create more consistent, detailed, and accurate soil maps while providing information about the related uncertainty. The production of high-quality soil maps is a key issue because it enables stakeholders (e.g. farmers, planners, other scientists) to understand the variation of soils at the landscape, field, and sub-field scales. They can be used as input in environmental models, such as hydrological, climate or vegetation productivity (crop models) addressing the uncertainty in the soil layers and its impact in the environmental modelling. When the products of digital soil mapping are integrated within other environmental models it enables assessment and mapping of soil functions to support sustainable management. We welcome presentations that 1) demonstrate the implementation and use of digital soil maps in different disciplines such as agricultural (e.g. crops, food production) and environmental (e.g. element cycles, water, climate) modelling 2) advance the tools of digital soil mapping 3) investigate the philosophy and strategies of digital soil mapping at different scales and for different purposes. We also welcome contributions reporting the state of the art of soil property prediction from hyperspectral satellites, especially focusing on quantitative estimationsmaking use of data-driven approaches such as machine learning, and physically based modelling or the integration of both.

Global changes urgently require advanced strategies to monitor geomorphic changes, identify critical areas and design strategies to mitigate impacts on those areas. A clear example is soil erosion, i.e. both, natural and man-made disturbances affecting the sedimentary flows represent key topics. Advances in data acquisition sensors and platforms together with new developments to treat and analyse geospatial offer opportunities to understand surface processes, identify sustainable and effective solutions, and mitigate impacts associated with global changes. In addition, massive amounts of open-source data, such as those provided by international space programs, are now available. Multi-temporal high resolution (4D) remote sensing (RS) techniques are continuously providing new opportunities to monitor and analyze landscape deformations and changes and infer the processes re-shaping them. 4DRS offers the opportunity to isolate landscape compartments at the appropriate temporal and spatial scale at which processes occur.
We intend to provide a platform for collaboration and discussion among soil scientists, hydrologists, geomorphologists and stakeholders with the objective of facilitating a dialogue on how emerging techniques must be efficiently used to detect critical changes, and analyze physical processes occurring on landscapes.
This session is open but not limited to the following topics: i) innovative tools for monitoring with 4DRS techniques the morphological changes, quantifying geomorphic processes, soil erosion and assessment of land degradation; ii) data-fusion of different RS technologies (e.g., LiDAR, photogrammetry, GNSS, multispectral images) and platforms (e.g., UAV, satellite, airborne, ground-based) to design and implement 4D surveys with multiscale approaches, evaluating their respective pros and cons, and focusing also on future opportunities; iii) workflows focusing on soil erosion and mass movements dynamics, especially facing new challenges in measuring, modelling, and defining protocols and procedures through the support of the 4DRS techniques; and iv) synergistic use of up-to-date RS surveys derived from multisource data integration (e.g., multispectral, hyperspectral, and thermal) that can be exploited as benchmarks and inputs for spatial-distributed models to support the prediction of the possible evolution scenarios. Early career scientists are encouraged to contribute to the session with original and advanced studies.

The session invites experimentalists and modelers working on air-land interactions from local to regional scales, in vegetated and/or urban systems. The program is open to a wide range of innovative studies in micrometeorology and related atmospheric and remote sensing disciplines. The topics may include the development of new observational devices, measurement techniques, experimental designs, data analysis methods, as well as novel findings on surface layer theory and parametrization, including local and non-local processes. Theory-based contributions may encompass soil-vegetation-atmosphere transport, internal boundary-layer theories, and flux footprint analyses. Of particular interest are synergistic studies employing experimental data, parametrizations, and models addressing energy and trace gas fluxes (of inert and reactive species) as well as water, carbon dioxide and other GHG fluxes. We focus on addressing outstanding problems in land surface boundary layer descriptions such as complex terrain, effects of horizontal heterogeneity on sub-meso-scale transport processes, energy balance closure, coupling/decoupling, stable stratification and night time fluxes, dynamic interactions with atmosphere, and plants (in canopy and above canopy) and soils.

Nature-based climate solutions, such as conservation agriculture, forest restoration, and wetland rewetting, offer great promises to increase soil organic carbon (SOC) and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for climate change mitigation. However, they also impact a variety of ecosystem properties such as surface albedo, energy partitioning, and hydrological cycles. To effectively measure, report, and verify (MRV) SOC changes, GHG fluxes, and climate-relevant parameters or processes, enhanced monitoring and modeling capabilities are urgently needed to comprehensively quantify the dynamics of carbon, energy, water, and nutrients in ecosystems. This session welcomes a wide range of contributions on topics related to nature-based climate solutions in agriculture, forestry, wetland, and other landscapes including, but not limited to: (1) developing scalable and cost-effective monitoring capacities through proximal and remote sensing combined with modeling to track SOC changes, GHG emissions, surface albedo, energy and water fluxes; (2) synthesizing multi-source observations to infer changes in the mentioned parameters and processes in natural and managed ecosystems; (3) developing process-based models to simulate the coupled carbon-food-water-energy processes in various landscapes; and (4) Enhancing systematic model-data integration to quantify the climatic impacts of nature-based solutions and inform decision-making in farming practice, policy design, and economic returns.

Many regions worldwide are coping with the climatic global change, which is causing an increase in extreme hydro-meteorological events. Shallow landslides involving the first meters of soil layers could increase significantly compared to current and past scenarios, modifying the susceptibility of a region and the frequency of their triggering. These phenomena provoke significant environmental damages, particularly in hilly and mountainous areas, with a general loss of shallow soil layers rich in organic matter and nutrients fundamental for agricultural areas and biodiversity. The triggering of these phenomena is related to the effect of intense rainfall events on usually unsaturated soils, with a predisposition related to the hydrological conditions present in soil layers. Hydrological field monitoring is, then, fundamental to understand the predisposing and triggering conditions of shallow landslides and to develop and calibrate reliable models for their spatio-temporal prediction.
This session aims to collect researches concerning the most recent progress on monitoring, predicting, and modeling shallow landslides at different spatial and temporal scales, covering a wide spectrum of approaches, from field and laboratory measurements to remote sensing techniques, modelling methods, and mitigation measures. We encourage presentations related to:
● laboratory or field models to assess the physical, geological, and hydrological conditions leading to the triggering of these phenomena;
● field hydrological monitoring for the assessment of predisposing and triggering conditions of shallow landslides;
● proximal and remote sensing methods for measurement and monitoring hillslopes prone to shallow landslides, to identify precursory evidence and to map new phenomena;
● development, application, and validation of models for the prediction of shallow landslides;
● effects of climatic global changes and land use changes on the susceptibility and hazards towards shallow landslides;
● mitigation measures to reduce the proneness of a territory towards shallow landslides.

Biogeochemical models inadequately capture microscale soil carbon effects, leading to conflicting portrayals of soils as carbon sinks or sources under climate change. New models, though promising, face challenges due to scarce data and variable microscale ecosystem processes, with variations reflecting microbiome diversity, and encompassing the physiological, hydrological, as well as mineralogical characteristics of soil microhabitats shaped by past selection.

This session will present interdisciplinary insights into soil carbon dynamics, examining how microscale interactions and microbial diversity affect carbon and nutrient cycles. Topics will include empirical data integration, data synthesis, harmonization of datasets, exploration of unifying principles governing nutrient cycling and energy flows, and their responses to environmental perturbations. We will also explore model parameterization challenges, trade-offs in model complexity, optimality based models in trait selection, and hierarchical multi-model approaches for improved climate model scaling. We welcome contributions from global change experiments using time-series metagenomic data and diversity-explicit microbial models, and encourage dialogue between marine and terrestrial research communities.

This session is focused on processes occurring within the lithosphere in the framework of the environmental systems, and it is oriented toward collecting studies relevant to understand the multiscale aspects of these systems and in proposing adequate multi-platform and inter-disciplinary tools for their monitoring.
The session is especially aimed to emphasize the interaction between the different environmental processes occurring at various spatial and temporal scales, which can also involve several orders of magnitude. Special attention is devoted to the studies focused on the development of techniques of data analysis and collection through new algorithms and technologies for multiscale monitoring of natural area characterize by different hazard, such as associated to volcanic processes, seismic events, energy exploitation, slope instability, floods, coastal instability, climate changes, and any other environmental context.
We expect contributions derived from several disciplines, as applied geophysics, geology, seismology, geodesy, geochemistry, remote and proximal sensing, volcanology, applied geology, soil science, marine geology, oceanography, climatology, and meteorology. In this context, the contributions in analytical and numerical modeling of geological and environmental processes are welcome, as well as the inter-disciplinary studies that highlight their multiscale properties.
The session includes, but not limited to, the following topics:
-Strategies of monitoring of the environmental systems in the space-time domain;
-Modeling methods for the simulation of environmental processes and optimization of their representative parameters;
-Laboratory experiments and field activities to study and model the sources, transport and effect of traditional and emerging contaminants in the environments;
-Environmental impact and risk analyses, uncertainty estimates and vulnerability/resilience assessment.

This session aims to present recent advances in the analysis of environmental and soil contaminations using Applied Geophysics, Remote Sensing and Artificial Intelligence.
Characterizing and understanding the surface and subsurface is a challenge for many scientific areas.
Applied Geophysics investigates underground using a variety of non-invasive, and non-destructive techniques such as ground-penetrating radar, magnetics, electrical resistivity tomography, electromagnetic induction, and seismics. Remote Sensing uses methods such as photogrammetry, LIDAR, GNSS, and satellite hyperspectral data to determine physical properties at a distance. Some remote sensing technologies can also provide information from the subsurface or interior of structures. Artificial Intelligence, namely Machine Learning, can be a useful tool to manage information using as input data provided by different methods, allowing the calculation of new contamination maps, that can help in the analysis of contamination areas.
Knowledge in these fields can be applied to a variety of research topics, in addition to laboratorial chemical analysis procedures, namely, to evaluate environmental pollutants (e.g. potentially toxic metals), and contributing to increasing knowledge about contaminated areas. When combined with other methods, they enable the development of integrated models of environmental management of contaminated areas, allowing the development of environmental risk maps, and contributing to the reduction of sampling and operational costs, as well as the reduction of assessment times in the management of contaminated areas.
The potential for replicability of this approaches is high, and can be applied in mines, landfills, industry and intensive agriculture.
This session will collect the contributions from Applied Geophysics, Remote Sensing, and Artificial Intelligence on the following topics:
- Environmental studies: characterization of the soil contamination by potentially toxic metals.
- Innovations in data acquisition, and processing of Geophysical, Remote Sensing and AI methods.

Continuous monitoring of natural physical processes is crucial for understanding their behaviour. The variety of instruments available enhances data collection, aiding in the comprehension of these processes. Long-term data collection reveals trends and patterns, such as seasonal variations, multi-year cycles, and anthropogenic impacts (e.g., deforestation, urbanization, pollution). Conversely, short-term monitoring is vital for real-time decision-making, improving hazard assessment, risk management, and warning systems. Effective data analysis and innovative instrumentation contribute to developing mitigation and adaptation strategies. This session highlights the application of geosciences and geophysical instrumentation, including sensors in natural and laboratory environments, for monitoring natural phenomena and utilizing data systems to study these processes.
The session disseminates advanced research on natural physical processes and the use of scientific principles to address future challenges, including extreme climatic conditions. It encourages novel, interdisciplinary approaches to monitoring, aiming to establish historical baselines. This session seeks to bridge scientific knowledge and technological advancements to improve monitoring and understanding of natural physical processes. The session is inter- and transdisciplinary (ITS), covering topics such as:

1. Destructive and Non-Destructive Sensing Techniques, including contactless and remote sensing methodologies.
2. Monitoring System Developments for understanding hydro-meteorological processes, glaciers, soil erosion, settlements, liquefaction, landslides, earthquakes, volcanic events, and wildfires.
3. Real-Time Monitoring Systems, integrating geoscience data with Building Information Modelling (BIM), digital twins, robotic monitoring, and automation for improved decision-making.
4. Advances in Data Systems for efficient real-time monitoring and processing of large data volumes using Cloud Data Platforms, Distributed and Scalable Data Systems, Real-Time Data Processing, AI, Machine Learning, Data Privacy and Security, and Edge Computing.
5. Storage Technologies and Data Integration, including advancements in Graph Databases, Data Interoperability, and Multi-Model Databases.
6. Intelligent data analysis approaches to analyse accurate and precise interpretation of big data sets driven by various technologies.

Imaging the Earth’s surface and reconstructing its topography to study the landscape and (sub-) surface processes have strongly evolved during the past two decades, sometimes separately in different scientific disciplines of geosciences. New generations of satellites, Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), LiDAR systems, Structure-from-Motion (SfM) methods and deep learning approaches have made 2D, 3D and 4D (time series) data acquisitions easier, cheaper, and more precise. The spatial, temporal and spectral resolutions of the measurements cover wide ranges of scales, offering the opportunity to study the evolution of the ground surface from local to regional scale with unprecedented details. Coupled with the development of optimized workflows to digitize and process analogue data, such as historical aerial photographs, geoscientists now have various sets of tools to better understand our rapidly changing environments and distinguish the anthropogenic and natural causes of these changes.

However, challenges still exist at both methodological and application levels. How to properly acquire images and 3D data in harsh, remote or non-ideal environments? How to deal with complex camera distortions? How to process unknown, damaged and/or poorly overlapping digitized analogue photographs? How to properly assess the precision of these measurements and take these estimates into account in our results and interpretation? How to deal with heterogeneous time series? These questions exemplify situations commonly faced by geoscientists.

In the present session, we would like to gather contributions from a broad range of geoscience disciplines (geomorphology, glaciology, volcanology, hydrology, bio-geosciences, geology, soil sciences, etc.) to share our views and experience about the opportunities, limitations and challenges that modern 2D/3D/4D surface imaging offers, no matter the physical process or environment studied. Contributions can cover any aspects of surface imaging, from new methods, tools and processing workflows to precision assessments, time series constructions and specific applications in geosciences. We would like to especially emphasize contributions that cover 1) novel data acquisition and processing approaches (including image matching, camera distortion correction, complex signal/image and point cloud processing, and time series construction), 2) data acquisition in complex and fast-changing environments, and 3) innovative applications in geosciences.

Stable isotopes are powerful tools for tracing water fluxes and associated nutrients in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. Given the complex interactions between subsurface water fluxes, plant water uptake and atmospheric drivers, new field- and laboratory-based methods should enable observations of ecohydrological processes at a high temporal and spatial resolution and with high precision and accuracy. At the same time, ecohydrological models shed new light on water and nutrient fluxes in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. We welcome experimental and modelling studies that present methodological developments and applications of isotope tracers to improve our process knowledge of water and nutrient fluxes between the subsurface, plants and the atmosphere, across different scales (from plant and forest stand up to the catchment scale). In our session, we aim to discuss i) innovative process-based interpretations from stable isotope data, ii) novel methods of model applications and data analysis, as well as iii) current methodological developments. We aim to foster interdisciplinary exchange between the various fields assessing ecohydrological processes using natural tracers, including research in groundwater and vadose zone hydrology, plant physiology, and ecology.

Natural organic matter (NOM) is the largest reservoir of reduced organic carbon on Earth, affecting C-N-P storage, metals availability, microbial activity, and the retention of organic contaminants, thereby modulating global biogeochemical cycles and processes. In seawater, NOM primarily exists in dissolved form as dissolved organic carbon (DOC), accounting approximately 662 Pg C, a value approximately equal to the atmospheric CO2 (750 Pg C). In terrestrial and atmospheric ecosystems, NOM accounts for around 1500 Pg C and 16 Tg C, respectively. Compositionally, NOM is a complex and heterogeneous mixture of thousands of organic substances with varying molecular sizes, physical and chemical properties, as well as a range of functional groups, including aromatic, aliphatic, phenolic and quinone structures. Currently <10% of NOM has been chemically characterized at the molecular level (as the sum lipids; amino acids and sugars) while, a plethora of molecular formulas in NOM isolated from various environmental compartments have been revealed from mass spectrometric techniques.
This session invites researchers with diverse expertise in spectroscopy (NMR, fluorescence, XPS) and mass spectrometry (Py-GC–MS; IR-MS, FTICR-MS; LC-MS-MS, FTMS; HR-MS) to present new findings and approaches on the composition and transformation of NOM including contaminants using the aforementioned techniques in the terrestrial, aquatic and atmospheric environment. We particularly welcome contributions that:
i) Introduce new methodologies and applications for HR-MS, FT-IRMS, and especially NMR—the latter, despite its potential, remains underexplored in environmental studies.
ii) Present innovative technologies for field study of NOM or monitoring of organic contaminants in the environment.
iii) Develop new practices for exploring, processing and storing biogeochemical data generated from spectroscopic and mass spectrometric techniques

Sitting under a tree, you feel the spark of an idea, and suddenly everything falls into place. The following days and tests confirm: you have made a magnificent discovery — so the classical story of scientific genius goes…

But science as a human activity is error-prone, and might be more adequately described as "trial and error", or as a process of successful "tinkering" (Knorr, 1979). Thus we want to turn the story around, and ask you to share 1) those ideas that seemed magnificent but turned out not to be, and 2) the errors, bugs, and mistakes in your work that made the scientific road bumpy. What ideas were torn down or did not work, and what concepts survived in the ashes or were robust despite errors? We explicitly solicit Blunders, Unexpected Glitches, and Surprises (BUGS) from modeling and field or lab experiments and from all disciplines of the Geosciences.

Handling mistakes and setbacks is a key skill of scientists. Yet, we publish only those parts of our research that did work. That is also because a study may have better chances to be accepted for publication in the scientific literature if it confirms an accepted theory or if it reaches a positive result (publication bias). Conversely, the cases that fail in their test of a new method or idea often end up in a drawer (which is why publication bias is also sometimes called the "file drawer effect"). This is potentially a waste of time and resources within our community as other scientists may set about testing the same idea or model setup without being aware of previous failed attempts.

In the spirit of open science, we want to bring the BUGS out of the drawers and into the spotlight. In a friendly atmosphere, we will learn from each others' mistakes, understand the impact of errors and abandoned paths onto our work, and generate new insights for our science or scientific practice.

Here are some ideas for contributions that we would love to see:
- Ideas that sounded good at first, but turned out to not work.
- Results that presented themselves as great in the first place but turned out to be caused by a bug or measurement error.
- Errors and slip-ups that resulted in insights.
- Failed experiments and negative results.
- Obstacles and dead ends you found and would like to warn others about.

--
Knorr, Karin D. “Tinkering toward Success: Prelude to a Theory of Scientific Practice.” Theory and Society 8, no. 3 (1979): 347–76.

Practical implementation of Soil Health Legislation. Implementing the practical aspects of Soil Monitoring Laws requires the combination of Practical, Scientific and Economic solutions for the robust monitoring of land under different use over time. Optimization of a number of approaches across fields from repositories, indicators to logistics and methodologies will be required for reliable metrics and continuous enhancement of monitoring practices.

Soils provide many ecosystem services, making them a crucial component for a sustainable future and in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to the EU Soil Strategy presented by the Commission in 2021, the lack of dedicated EU legislation has been a major factor in the alarming state of EU soils. To address this, the Commission introduced the Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive inJuly 2023. This directive aims to ensure the same level of protection for soils as already exists for water, the marine environment, and air, with the aspirational goal to have all the soils in a healthy condition by 2050, in line with the EU’s Zero Pollution ambition. During this session, scientific and transdisciplinary insights to support soil policies are presented, with a focus on soil health and the importance of soil data. In this session we are looking for contribution that will showcase results that contribute to create future soil health policies or to identify gaps in current legislations. For policy support, design and monitoring, the generation of user-oriented dashboards is crucial, (e.g EUSO soil degradation dashboard). Contributions in this session will address the potential of soil data from local to continental scale, the efforts and challenges carried out by researchersin harmonising soil data across time and space, and how this data can be used for decision support systems in line with the objectives of the EU’s Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive and the broader UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Additionally, speakers will discuss the role of transdisciplinary research, emphasizing how involving various stakeholders can lead to feasible, widely-applicable principles to improve soil management and increase soil resilience.

In the face of climate change, Africa is more than ever in need of climate services, scientific infrastructure and skilled people who are trained in providing solutions for their countries in how best deal with the adverse impacts of climate change. Over the past years, European governments and funding agencies have invested in climate change research and capacity building in various regions of Africa. However, these initiatives, mostly work independently and do not seek for synergies or collaborations.
This session aims to bring these capacity building initiatives together, provide them a stage to present themselves and a platform for networking, finding synergies and collaborations. We invite initiatives of any kind to present their work related to climate change capacity development in Africa. This also includes climate change-related topics such as, floods, droughts, natural hazards, land degradation, and so on. We welcome the full-variety of capacity building initiatives, including small-scale teaching or workshops (online or on site), co-development of research or monitoring infrastructure, master programmes, doctoral programmes, training of local communities or single research projects that include a capacity development component.
After getting an insight in the full bandwidth of capacity development initiatives in this session, we aim to follow-up with a splinter meeting in which the foundation of a European-African Network for Capacity Development in climate change Adaptation research in Africa (NetCDA) will be discussed. The NetCDA network should provide the basis for future exchange, sharing best practices and finding collaborations between various initiatives and institutions. We invite all session participants and other interested climate scientists from both continents to attend this splinter meeting. More details of the timing and location of this splinter meeting will follow.

Following the success of previous years, this session will explore reasons for the under-representation of different groups (gender identities, sexual orientations, racial and cultural backgrounds, abilities, religions, nationality or geography, socioeconomic status, ages, career stages, etc.) by welcoming debate among scientists, decision-makers and policy analysts in the geosciences.

The session will focus on both obstacles that contribute to under-representation and on best practices and innovative ideas to remove those obstacles. Contributions are solicited on the following topics:

- Role models to inspire and further motivate others (life experience and/or their contributions to promote equality)
- Imbalanced representation, preferably supported by data, for awards, medals, grants, high-level positions, invited talks and papers
- Perceived and real barriers to inclusion (personally, institutionally, culturally)
- Recommendations for new and innovative strategies to identify and overcome barriers
- COVID-related data, discussions and initiatives
- Gender Equality Plans (GEP) in European host institutions: the good, the bad, and the ugly
- Best practices and strategies to move beyond barriers, including:
• successful mentoring programmes;
• networks that work;
• specific funding schemes;
• examples of host institutions initiatives;

This session is co-organised with the support of the European Research Council (ERC).

Evidence-based policymaking aims to ground public policies in the best available research and data, ensuring that decisions are informed by robust evidence rather than by ideology, assumptions, or political considerations. To support and inform policy, stakeholders need to engage in a way that addresses needs and develops solutions. To ensure this engagement is effective, it is important to identify the most effective formats for engagement to ensure re-searchers contributions enrich and strengthen local, national or international policy.
This session aims to show how research activities and outputs may impact society and policy beyond the academic world. It will highlight stories of success and failure from scientists who have engaged in policy or other activities that made critical societal impacts – either on an international, European, national, or local level – across different geoscience disciplines. Equally important, the session will also present the role of those working from within political institutions who have facilitated successful science-society-policy-dialogues. It will also aim to examine the various challenges that researchers face when engaging on the science-society-policy interface and various strategies that others have taken to manage and overcome them.

This session is relevant for researchers, policymakers, and those working on the interface from all career levels and science disciplines and will provide space for follow-up questions and a discussion with the participants at the session and at a splinter meeting during EGU25 week.

Geoethics is essential for tackling global human-caused changes. It integrates ethical considerations into geoscience, improving policy and decision-making. Geoscientists must provide accurate, transparent, and unbiased data to policymakers, ensuring decisions reflect environmental, social, and economic impacts. In times of rapid climate change, resource overexploitation, increasing risks, and environmental damages, geoethics promotes sustainable, just, and respectful geoscience practices. This framework encourages scientifically sound, socially responsible, and environmentally sustainable actions, building trust between scientists, policymakers, and the public through transparency, accountability, and community engagement. In practical terms, integrating geoethics into policymaking and decision-making involves:

a) Building Trust: Highlighting the importance of transparency, accountability, and community engagement in fostering trust between scientists, policymakers, decision-makers, and the public.
b) Transparent Communication: Clearly sharing scientific findings and uncertainties with all stakeholders to support informed and democratic decision-making.
c) Inclusive Practices: Involving local communities, indigenous peoples, and marginalized groups to ensure their voices are heard and their rights respected in geoscientific work.
d) Sustainable Solutions: Focusing on long-term sustainability over short-term gains to ensure resource extraction and land use do not compromise future generations' needs.
e) Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Working with other fields like sociology, economics, and political science to address complex environmental issues holistically.
f) Geoscience Education: Training young people to understand Earth system complexities and prepare the next generation of geoscientists to address global challenges.

By fostering a culture of ethical responsibility, geoscience can guide actions that mitigate adverse effects, promote resilience, and contribute positively to society. Ultimately, geoethics strengthens the capacity of geoscience to inform and influence policy, fostering a more sustainable and equitable future for all.
This session aims to collect and stimulate discussions about ideas, initiatives, project outcomes, tools (including new technologies), and case studies that highlight the positive contributions (as well as exemplify failures) of geoscientists in informing the decision-making and policy-making processes.

Climate change represents one of the defining societal challenges of the 21st century. However, the response to this challenge remains largely inadequate across the board. Both in terms of mitigation and adaptation, measures currently taken by countries or companies fall short of what is required to ensure a safe and healthy life for populations around the globe, both today and in the future. The past and continued failure to address climate change results in extreme weather events causing damages and losses, as well as the prospect of further worsening impacts. Insufficient emission reductions exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and lead to increasingly unsafe living conditions in the future. The shortfall in climate action has led citizens to take up legal action to either receive compensation for suffered climate damages or force decision makers to commit to the necessary emissions reductions. In this session, we invite contributions that help bridge the gap between the legal practice of climate litigation and the geosciences. This can include new scientific methods that can support legal efforts, and inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives on how to integrate geoscience insights in litigation, and how to communicate scientific findings to legal practitioners and society at large, in light of legal and ethical aspects of climate change. We also welcome contributions assessing questions of climate change and impact attribution, responsibility, human rights, burden sharing of efforts, translation between science and law, and communication of scientific findings, that link beyond disciplinary boundaries.