Update on SHERPA, the first quantitative assessment of soil health at European scale considering soil genesis

Soil health degradation is a major threat to European food security, biodiversity, and climate stability. While scientists have debated how to define soil health during recent decades, a quantifiable framework for monitoring, management, and policy remained lacking. We introduce SHERPA (Soil Health Evaluation, Rating Protocol, and Assessment) and present a first soil health assessment across Europe. All major soil degradation processes (with the exception of organic contamination) were scored and subtracted from the intrinsic soil health resulting in quantitative final scores. As reported before, cropland soils throughout Europe are highly degraded. Surprisingly, soil health of grasslands is also very negatively impacted. Soil erosion, nutrient surplus, and pesticide risk are largely driving poor soil health aligning with reported high biodiversity loss in agricultural land. Forest soils are also surprisingly low in health, mainly because of nitrogen surplus, reflecting documented widespread forest decline from nutrient imbalances. Interactive maps highlight specific threats to soil health across Europe, offering valuable insights for targeted action. SHERPA is able to quantify soil health across Europe. However, at the current state of data availability, soil health is likely to be overestimated. Monitoring data of soil structure, compaction, pesticide spread and, in forest ecosystems, disturbance of humus layer is urgently needed for final assessment of soil health.

The presentation will include the newest work on SHERPA including assessment and mapping of wetlands soils, the possibilities of including the SHERPA into the global soil security concept of the Aroura think tank, and developing SHERPA scores for bare and scarcely vegetated soils in nature conservation areas.