Funding programme

Horizon Europe is the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation.

Read more about the Horizon Europe programme here.

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Call overview

This call aims to increase soil literacy in society across Member States.

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Expected outcome

This topic contributes to the implementation of the Mission 'A Soil Deal for Europe', in particular to its specific objective 8 “Increase soil literacy in society across Member States”.

Project results should contribute to all the following outcomes:

• The public's awareness of the value of soil is significantly increased.
• Citizens are empowered to take an active role in science and in increasing the knowledge base on soils by monitoring and gathering data on soil biodiversity and becoming more aware of the importance of soils and the soil food web in their daily lives.
• Greater availability of local scale data on soil health. This will expand and complement established soil databases to support critical landscape decisions and policy development.
• The EU Soil Observatory scope is enlarged and populated with citizen science data.

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Scope

Citizen science is an important vehicle in bringing science to the people and promoting the goal of universal and equal access to scientific data and information. For example, there is a tremendous potential to foster education and learning opportunities through the involvement of students in real world issues. Citizen science also engages society at large in key policy developments through direct participation to assess impacts. Crowdsourced data is being used, for example, by UN agencies for humanitarian activities and citizen scientists are providing data relevant to monitoring the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Citizen science projects amplify scientific research and support scientists to accomplish their research objectives. Citizen science data are used extensively in a range of environmental studies such as in the areas of above-ground biodiversity and water pollution. In relation to soils however, citizen science has received less attention. Yet, it has huge potential to raise awareness on the importance of soils, gather a wide range of site-specific data and thereby complement “formal” soil sampling programmes and existing data sets.

The engagement of citizens, including land managers in soil mapping and soil monitoring provides novel opportunities, also through the use of digital technologies. Main challenges however remain the integration of data from citizen science with data from professional observations due to issues of quality control, methodologies and potential observer bias.

Read more in the Work Programme - Missions, page 309.

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Eligibility

To be eligible for funding, applicants must be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.:

• the Member States of the European Union, including their outermost regions;
• the Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) linked to the Member States;
• eligible non-EU countries including countries associated to Horizon Europe and low- and middle-income countries.

Any legal entity, regardless of its place of establishment, including legal entities from non-associated third countries or international organisations (including international European research organisations 1) is eligible to participate (whether it is eligible for funding or not), provided that the conditions laid down in the Horizon Europe Regulation have been met, along with any other conditions laid down in the specific call topic.

A ‘legal entity’ means any natural or legal person created and recognised as such undernational law, EU law or international law, which has legal personality and which may, acting in its own name, exercise rights and be subject to obligations, or an entity without legal personality.

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Consortium composition

Unless otherwise provided for in the specific call conditions, legal entities forming a consortium are eligible to participate in actions provided that the consortium includes:

• at least one independent legal entity established in a Member State; and
• at least two other independent legal entities, each established in different Member States or Associated Countries.

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Budget

EUR 6,000,000.