Soil, the weathered material between the atmosphere at the Earth's surface and the bedrock below the surface, is a vital, largely non-renewable resource which ensures a number of environmental, economical, social and cultural key functions. Soil erosion, a natural geological phenomenon resulting from the removal of soil particles by water and wind, affects both agriculture and the natural environment and is one of the most important (yet probably the least well-known) of today's environmental problems.
In response to concerns about the degradation of soils in the EU, the European Commission has outlined the first steps in a strategy to protect soils by publishing a communication titled "Towards a Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection", where erosion has been identified as one of the major threats to soil in Europe. It should be noted that this is the first occasion on which the Commission has addressed soil protection for its own sake and therefore the communication is both broad and descriptive in approach as well as charting the way forward.
It is widely agreed on international level that greater understanding of the occurrence, processes and impacts of soil erosion by water, wind and tillage is needed in order to enhance mankind's ability to tackle the resulting environmental problems. However, so far, there is a general lack of suitable soil degradation monitoring methods and services that are robust and accurate enough to assist future actions in planning and guiding anti-soil-erosion activities either at a national or international level.
In the framework of the Geoland project, the Soil Observatory aims at the development of such pre-operational soil erosion risk assessment services which are in line with current EU policies and are based in the use of Earth Observation data, image analysis techniques and GIS models.
