Keep soil alive, protect soil biodiversity
World Soil Day 2020 (#WorldSoilDay) and its campaign "Keep soil alive, Protect soil biodiversity" aims to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems and human well-being by addressing the growing challenges in soil management, fighting soil biodiversity loss, increasing soil awareness and encouraging governments, organizations, communities and individuals around the world to commit to proactively improving soil health.
Take action to protect soil biodiversity by digging in with us!
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In our Region
Several projects have been funded to investigate the soil biodiversity in Emilia Romagna region.
In 2001 started a project to calculate the Soil Organic Carbon stock in the soils of Po plain and to collect first data on soil fauna biodiversity applying the QBS-ar index (Index of Biological Soil Quality), an index based on soil microarthropods community which is applied in different countries (EC DG ENV, 2010).
In 2013 started the LIFE12ENV/IT578 “HELPSOIL”: the project aims to demonstrate that the techniques used by the so called “Conservation Agriculture” are sustainable for farmers and preserve soil fundamental ecosystem functions such as biodiversity, fertility and better adaptation to climate change.
From 2014 until 2017 in four farms of Emilia-Romagna region we surveyed the state of soil microarthropods community in relation to these agricolture techniques.The project, as a priority, evaluated areas characterized by agricultural management with different degrees of intensity in order to obtain relevant information for the monitorinf of the Rural Development Policy 2014-2020 which is still ongoing