The NBSOIL Project has selected demonstration sites for testing nature-based solutions (NBS) to restore soil health in different human-affected ecosystems. The demonstration sites, located in Poland, Austria, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, will provide practical demonstrations of nature-based solutions to restore soil health that can then be implemented and thereby assess the required knowledge and technologies for their application.
The demonstration sites will also allow the compilation of available data and add novel one on the impact of nature-based solutions for soil health. This will provide a better evaluation of the expected impact in case of their larger-scale implementation in the course of EU soil health strategies.
Regarding the project activities, the demonstration sites will give on-site teaching and demonstration material for soil advisers to be integrated into the NBSOIL Soil Academy. These sites will also establish testing and implementation sites for innovative soil sensing and mapping tools developed within the project’s work package 4 (WP4). This will allow soil advisers a more targeted management of soil health restoration combining available mapping and sensing information with on-site datasets.
Following the focus of the project, demonstration sites have been identified for different ecosystems where NBS are practised in the following context: agricultural soils, peat soils, forest soils, and urban and industrial soils. Specifically, the demonstration sites will test the six multifunctional practices identified by NBSOIL to improve soil health in Europe: organic fertilizers from biowastes and cover cropping for agricultural sites; paludiculture for peat soils; forest diversification for forest soils; bioremediation and urban greening for urban and industrial soils.
Discover in detail the selection criteria and the site description in the document below.