NEIKER has developed LURZAIN, a citizen-accessible web application for sustainable soil assessment and management

04/07/2024

Soil is an essential resource for the balance of ecosystems. It supports vegetation, enabling plants and crops to grow, and it also plays a crucial role in regulating the water cycle, facilitating infiltration and storage, helping to prevent floods and droughts. Maintaining soil health is therefore essential in order to promote environmental sustainability and agricultural productivity, as soil degradation could lead to loss of fertility, reduction in biodiversity and cause serious environmental problems.

In this context, the NEIKER technology centre, member of the Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA), has developed LURZAIN, a citizen science web application focused on soil health assessment. The tool is part of the C.7.2 Citizen science platform in the LIFE IP Urban Klima 2050 project, which is backed by the European Union and fulfils a dual objective: drive the energy and climate transition to achieve resilience in the Basque Country; and help people understand the phenomenon of climate change and enable them to collaborate in research and its consequences. LURZAIN is one of the 3 projects that will make up the citizen science platform.

More specifically, the solution seeks to provide anyone interested with a tool that enables them to easily assess soil health, providing them with the necessary parameters for its sustainable management.

To do so, NEIKER has used the experience acquired over more than a decade through the Soil Health Cards, a system focused on understanding the state of soil ecosystems. "We have adjusted and perfected a proposal of 12 specific measurements that are applied in LURZAIN, such as, for example, the extraction of a block of soil to count the number of earthworms, organisms that perform crucial functions, such as decomposing organic matter or improving soil structure," explains Lur Epelde, researcher at NEIKER's Natural Resources Conservation Department.

To improve the accuracy and efficiency of the measurements, in collaboration with the James Hutton Institute in Scotland, the centre has moved towards digitalisation by incorporating an innovative measurement that uses a mobile phone to take images, along with neural network models that estimate key soil properties, such as organic matter, texture and pH.

In this way, LURZAIN organises these 12 measurements into 5 key soil functions to sustain life on Earth: plant production, biodiversity promotion, water regulation, fertility maintenance and carbon sequestration.

Evaluation of practices

Using the data obtained, the solution generates a comparative diagnosis with an extensive database. This functionality not only provides an up-to-date view of the state of the soil, but also enables a historical record to be established by repeating the measurements each year.

"This record makes it easy to observe how any changes in soil management, whether agricultural interventions, conservation practices or environmental variations, can influence soil health over time. This is crucial in order to evaluate the effectiveness of sustainable management practices and to make informed decisions aimed at conservation and improving natural resources," according to the centre's researcher.

Active participation of citizens

The solution is designed to be used without the need for specialised laboratories, just by following simple instructions. In order to promote its use, NEIKER plans to organise regular courses and provide kits with the necessary materials to carry out the measurements in order to involve different target groups, from professionals in the agricultural field to students and citizens interested in the health of their environment.

The best example of this is the collaboration with the Environmental Studies Centre of Vitoria-Gasteiz, which has coordinated its municipality’s "Citizen Science Participation Network", including the "Soil Conservation Programme", since 2018. Over these years, more than 350 plots have been measured in this programme, which has provided the experience in order to be able to launch LURZAIN now. And they are the first to test LURZAIN.

In addition to providing users with useful information, it also encourages active participation in the monitoring of soil health in the Basque Country through citizen science. In this regard, Epelde points out that "each measurement taken will be integrated into an interactive map available at www.lurzain.eus, contributing to the creation of a thorough and detailed record of soil health in the region".