Healthy soils are essential for our environment and society, as they deliver crucial ecosystem services. However, soils across the European Union (EU) are increasingly affected by multiple soil degradation processes. As a result of these increasing degradation incidences, recent EU policy initiatives have been taken to protect and restore soils, such as the good agricultural and environmental conditions under the Common Agricultural Policy, as well as the Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive, the Mission Soil and the EU Soil Strategy for 2030, aiming to reach healthy soils by 2050. Soil monitoring through time as well as studying changes in soil status is needed to verify whether EU soils are on track to reach a healthy state by 2050. In this study, trends of seven soil degradation processes were analysed, using EU-scale spatial layers and data points produced from harmonised repeated monitoring surveys. Results suggest that the range of unhealthy soils decreased in the past decades regarding three indicators, namely soil erosion by water, harvest erosion and phosphorus deficiency. Conversely, results suggest that the area with unhealthy soils increased regarding loss of soil organic carbon, phosphorus excess and soil sealing. No clear trends were observed for soil pH. The temporal coverage of the available datasets only marginally covers the period since the start of the Mission Soil and the EU Soil Strategy. Thus, evaluating the effectiveness of these policy initiatives in protecting soils was not possible in this study. Projections suggest that four studied soil degradation processes will further deteriorate in the upcoming decades due to climate change, continued unsustainable management practices, land use changes and urbanisation. This shows the importance of the Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive, the EU Soil Strategy and the Mission Soil to continue the investment in soil monitoring and related research, to accelerate the implementation of sustainable soil management practices, and to bring all indicators on track to reach healthy soils by 2050.

BROOTHAERTS Nils;  FENDRICH Arthur;  VAN EYNDE Elise;  YUNTA Felipe;  DE ROSA Daniele;  BORRELLI Pasquale;  JONES Arwyn;  PANAGOS Panos; 

2026-07-20

WILEY

JRC145864

1365-2389 (online),   

https://doi.org/10.1111/ejss.70380,    https://bsssjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ejss.70380,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC145864,   

10.1111/ejss.70380 (online),