As we approach project closure in April 2024, the final symposium has been launched to the public last week, entitled Earth observation for soil protection and restauration, to be held at ESA-ESRIN in Frascati, near Rome, on the 6^th and 7^th of March 2024.

WORLDSOILS will release the results and conclusions in a dedicated session during the symposium.

The ESA Symposium on Earth observation for soil protection and restoration seeks the following objectives:

1. To frame the usability of Earth observation technologies for soil protection and restauration requirements targeted by international and EU related policies, including monitoring, reporting and verification.
2. To present and evaluate the WORLDSOILS Soil Organic Carbon Monitoring System for SOC prediction over bare and permanently covered soils, and the lessons learnt from validation case studies.
3. To gather evolution requirements of EO based soil monitoring systems and options for sustained operations and business models.
4. To prospect ways for a downstream service to support national and European agencies for reporting on soil health/quality and thus, contribute to the Land Degradation Monitoring and reporting on Sustainable Development Goal 15.3.1.
5. To showcase the capacity of satellite remote sensing, alone or combined, for monitoring, validating, reporting or verifying of other specific soil components.

We invite members of the broad soil-stakeholder community to submit their abstract for oral or poster presentation select the most fitting thematic session. Abstracts can be submitted here.

Key topics for abstract submission are the next: 

1. EU Soil policy and Earth Observation: research, industry, and technology
2. Monitoring soil parameters: EO as a trustworthy technique
3. Soil Organic Carbon Monitoring: data sources, prediction algorithms, handling of uncertainties
4. Soil carbon certification to the light of edge technologies and soil business models 
5. Advanced satellite instrumentation for soil health
6. Soil data and methodologies: AI, geo-statistics, spectroscopy, machine learning and other
7. Towards a Copernicus soil monitoring service portfolio
8. Remote Sensing of soils: validation methods for agro-policies
9. Show-casing potential soil carbon removals in various LULC types, in the short and long terms

The parallel sessions seek the widest participation from submitted Abstracts, following the logic of the EU Soil Science and policy framework. 

Please click HERE to download the preliminary programme, which will be constantly updated according to the scientific and logistics needs.

Relevant deadlines:

Visit https://www.eo4soilprotection.org/ for more information