At the heart of SOILS4MED is the development of a Mediterranean-adapted Soil Ecosystem Health (SEH) monitoring protocol — a regionally tailored framework inspired by the European LUCAS and SOILS4AFRICA soil survey methodologies.
The protocol defines an integrated set of indicators and monitoring procedures designed to:
- Reflect the environmental diversity of Mediterranean soils and land use types (spanning across agricultural, forest, semi-natural areas)
- Meet the practical needs and capacities of stakeholders across partner countries
- Enable harmonized, region-wide assessment and comparison of soil health conditions
The protocol has been validated in study areas corresponding to the major agroecological regions and soil types of the Mediterranean, from Southern Europe to North Africa and the Near East. This field implementation has generated the first region-wide harmonized soil ecosystem health dataset for the Mediterranean — a foundational resource for science, policy, and land management.
The two documents below summarize the protocols defined by the project to design the sampling grid and to survey, describe and sample the soils:
- Draft Mediterranean Region-adapted Soil Ecosystem Health Monitoring Protocol — D4.1 (2025)
- Study Areas and Integrated MR-wide Experimental Setting — D4.2 (2025)
Laboratory methods, pedo-transfer functions and normative values have been reviewed and harmonized to ensure data quality and interoperability across national contexts.