Assessing soil health quantitatively at European scale considering soil genesis

Assessing soil health quantitatively at European scale considering soil genesis | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Article Assessing soil health quantitatively at European scale considering soil genesis Christine Alewell, Surya Gupta, Jérôme Poulenard, Noémie Niquille, and 11 more This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-6470019/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Soil health degradation is a major threat to European food security, biodiversity, and climate stability. While scientists have debated how to define soil health during recent decades, a quantifiable framework for monitoring, management, and policy remains lacking. We introduce SHERPA (Soil Health Evaluation, Rating Protocol, and Assessment) as a framework and present a first assessment across Europe. Surprisingly, soil health of grasslands is as negatively impacted as cropland soils. Soil erosion, nutrient surplus, and pesticide risk are largely driving poor soil health aligning with reported high biodiversity loss in agricultural land. Forest soils are also surprisingly low in health, mainly because of nitrogen surplus, reflecting documented widespread forest decline from nutrient imbalances. Interactive maps highlight specific threats to soil health across Europe, offering valuable insights for targeted action. Earth and environmental sciences/Environmental sciences/Environmental impact Earth and environmental sciences/Solid Earth sciences/Geochemistry Earth and environmental sciences/Environmental sciences/Environmental chemistry/Environmental monitoring Earth and environmental sciences/Solid Earth sciences/Sedimentology Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Need for a clear quantitative definition of soil health Reduced soil health is increasingly recognized as one of the most critical threats to European food security, aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity, and climate change mitigation (Panagos et al., 2024a). Due to soil’s broad environmental and societal functions, soil scientists request that soil health should be legally recognized as a common good (Lehmann et al., 2020). In response, the European Union (EU) has identified soil health as one of five Mission themes (Arias-Navarro et al., 2024), representing a new approach to addressing some of Earth’s greatest challenges. The EU Soil Strategy for 2030 (European Commission, 2021) was launched to combat declining soil health in Europe and beyond. The ambition is for the entirety of Europe to have healthy soils by 2050 (Arias-Navarro et al., 2024) with a European Soil Monitoring & Resilience Law (SML, 2023) recognizing the ecosystem services provided by healthy soils. Although an awareness is growing that healthy soils are the basis of a healthy society, anchoring this view into policy is still a challenge (van der Putten et al., 2023), with one of the most difficult tasks to define and quantify soil health. To make the EU’s Soil Monitoring Law operational, soil health needs to be measurable (van der Putten et al., 2023) and requires a legal framework to address the multitude of processes that are involved in land degradation. The comparison of soil health to human health was established as early as the 1990s (Doran and Parkin, 1994), where a physician assesses various bodily functions, including temperature, blood pressure, pulse rate, and specific blood or urine analyses. In addition to these measurements, the physician must also observe visible indicators of health, which can be regarded as intrinsic health characteristics. In contrast, soils represent intricate systems characterized by potentially high biodiversity, influenced by both physical and chemical parameters in situ and ex situ. Consequently, the evaluation of soil health is considerably more complex than that of human health, particularly since there is no individual present to provide information regarding its well-being. Numerous reviews, assessments and concepts of soil health have been published in recent years (e.g., (Bünemann et al., 2018; Doran and Parkin, 1994; Guo, 2021; Harris et al., 2022; Lehmann et al., 2020)). However, there are less than a handful that attempt to provide and end-to-end solution (Lehmann et al., 2020). The recognition of the extensive and critical issue of soil degradation in Europe is often approached through oversimplified methods that rely on a 'convergence of evidence' perspective, indicating that 60–70% of soils are in a non-healthy state (Panagos et al., 2024b; Pravalie et al., 2024). However, there remains a significant gap in the establishment of a clear and quantifiable framework for the monitoring, protection, and management of soil health, which is essential for enabling a quantitative assessment of soil condition. Such definitions are crucial for effective monitoring, management, policy decisions, and implementation. Finding efficient, easy-to-measure indicators for soil health is challenging, because there is no one-size-fits-all indicator for the multifunctionality of soil (Bünemann et al., 2018; Doran and Parkin, 1994). Here, a two-step procedure, that recognizes soil health through emergent properties that can become degraded by overuse forms the conceptual basis of the approach taken. We propose SHERPA (Soil Health Evaluation, Rating Protocol, and Assessment) as a framework, where in a first part a ruling out of the most important soil threats is undertaken (refining and expanding the original idea as in (Panagos et al., 2024b; Prăvălie et al., 2024). The second part goes beyond this to assess the intrinsic soil health status with key indicators of emergence associated with healthy soil profile development. The indicator uses, for example, soil genetic factors such as climate and environment (pedo-climatic regions), surface cover, soil management and soil structure to assess soil health in a decision tree logic (Fig. 1 ; supporting information 1 for the full key). SHERPA represents a framework that embodies these concepts and generates a score that can be interpreted as the health of the soil in an objective and quantifiable way. This score can be used to monitor trends over time and across regions, assess the severity of different soil threats, inform policy measures, aid goal setting for management and may eventually help evaluate the economic costs of soil degradation and restoration. The SHERPA framework The European Soil Monitoring & Resilience Law defines soil health as ‘the physical, chemical and biological condition of the soil determining its capacity to function as a vital living system and to provide ecosystem services’ (SML, 2023). Our working definition of soil health for SHERPA is that a soil is healthy if its natural functions in relation to its land use type are not subject to degradation in any significant way. SHERPA quantifies, in its first part, all major soil threats as ruling out criteria while in the second part, the negative scores of these threats are set against (e.g., subtracted from) positive scores indicative of intrinsic soil health based on soil genesis, as the embodiment of complexity and emergence, under specific environmental and land use conditions (Fig. 1 ). A detailed description of how degradation processes as well as intrinsic soil health was assessed is described in the supporting information including all data sources and spatial resolution (see Supporting Information 1 for the full SHERPA protocol). Part 1 (Soil degradation processes) considers the main soil degradation processes dependent on relevance and data availability for the three land-use types (Supporting Information 2, Table S2.1; for all scientific background as well as justification of score assignment please see Supporting Information 1, for data sources and their spatial resolution see Supporting Information 2, Table S2.2). Part 2 (intrinsic soil health assessment) evaluates the inherent health of soil not through generic thresholds based on a combination of parameters, but by examining fundamental soil characteristics that signify healthy soils within specific land use contexts and environmental conditions. This assessment follows a decision tree framework that is informed by the understanding of soil formation, which is influenced by factors such as geology, mineralogy, climate, altitude, surface cover, and land management practices. It is essential to consider the concept of soil health in relation to the processes of soil formation, or pedogenesis, which includes both the progressive development of soils and the particular evolutionary stage reached by a specific soil type. This perspective is deeply rooted in the European tradition of soil science. While our methodology for soil study considers practical and operational aspects, it remains fundamentally anchored in post-Darwinian natural sciences, which explicitly recognize the evolutionary context of the subject. Ultimately, the objective is to maintain the SHERPA key as streamlined as possible, making it appropriate for large-scale monitoring. We applied SHERPA using data sets from the Europe-wide LUCAS soil sampling for cropland and grassland soils (Land Use/Cover Area frame statistical Survey Soil; (Orgiazzi et al., 2018)), as well as the International Co-operative Programme on Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Forest (ICP forest; http://icp-forests.net/ ; (Ferretti and Fischer, 2013; Haußmann and Fischer, 2004; Puletti et al., 2019)). We combined these with available studies on degradation processes (see Table S2.2) to conduct a statistically robust initial assessment across Europe. It is important to emphasize that we assessed point data only as any kind of extrapolation and scaling into maps would not adequately address the highly heterogeneous nature of soil health. However, due to the lack of data required, we relied for some parameters on data extracted from published maps (see Table S2.2). Soil health in Europe per land use type as indicated by SHERPA SHERPA results allow for the first time (i) a quantitative assessment of severity of the different risk factors for the soil, and (ii) a yardstick by which different soils in different regions may be compared. Not surprisingly, and as reported previously (Panagos et al., 2024b; Prăvălie et al., 2024), cropland soils are highly degraded with 66.5% of these soils shown to have a negative overall soil health score between − 20 and − 30 (Fig. 2 b). As such, the majority of cropland soils in Europe are affected substantially by several soil degradation processes as each single process has a maximum negative score of -9. Comparing the different geographical regions of Europe (EUROVOC, 2025), southern European cropland soils are the most degraded (average score-29) followed by central and western European soils (-24) and northern croplands being the least affected (-16; Fig. 2 c). The degradation processes affecting cropland the most, are soil erosion (medium severity between − 2.5 in northern to -5 in southern regions), nitrogen (severe impact of -7 to -9) and phosphorus surplus (medium − 1.5 in western to 4.5 in southern regions) as well as pesticide input (medium to severe impact of -2.7 in northern to -7.7 in southern regions, Fig. 2 c). Please note that a direct comparison of scores between processes are not meaningful as these scores indicate the severity of a degradation process within the reported occurrence but no weighting between different processes. While the latter results of high soil degradation in European croplands are nothing new, this clear nutrient overload alongside high pesticide risk, is consistent with the dramatic ongoing and ever accelerating biodiversity decline in Europe (Pereira et al., 2024) with both soils and adjacent waters being affected. According to SHERPA scores, there are currently no healthy permanent grasslands in Europe, with the highest frequency of soil health scores are calculated between − 20 and − 30 indicating high rates of soil degradation (~ 77% of all assessed grassland soils) especially in central-eastern and western Europe with northern regions being clearly distributed more to the right side indicating less degradation (note that at current data availability sample numbers differ significantly with 345, 83, 20, 16 for western, central eastern, northern and southern grasslands, respectively, Fig. 3 b). While the average of northern grasslands finalizes with − 16, averages of Southern and Western European grasslands score much lower with − 26 (Fig. 3 b). Thus, surprisingly, SHERPA indicates that soil health in European grasslands is not better than in croplands. This is consistent with most grasslands being affected by at least two or three degradation processes (Fig. 3 a). The same pattern is indicated by the cumulative degradation plot for grasslands (Fig. 3 c) with southern Europe having the highest rates of soil erosion and southern, western and central eastern regions showing to have higher nitrogen and phosphorus surplus as well as pesticide risk compared to northern regions. The soil degradation processes affecting the SHERPA score most in grasslands are nitrogen (-7 to – 9) and phosphorus surplus (-6 to -9) as well as pesticide risk (-3 to -6) followed by soil erosion (-0.6 to -2). The latter is consistent with the reports of high and still dramatically proceeding decline in biodiversity loss in European agricultural lands, which is of course partly due to the impact of cropland land, but, as demonstrated by SHERPA scores, is also attributed to the nutrient overloading and pesticide input into grasslands (and, of course, from croplands and grasslands to the adjacent waters). However, we need to state, that there is a high uncertainty assessing the pesticide risk in extracting the data from (Tang et al., 2021) with a resolution of 10 km. Thus, for future assessment better data availability of pesticide use would enable to calculate pesticide load indicators as suggested by (Kudsk et al., 2018) and (Lewis et al., 2021) for the UK and Denmark which potentially decreases uncertainty of pesticide risk. In European forests, soil health scores are clearly more positive compared to grasslands and croplands with one peak in frequency distribution between − 2 and − 5 (all regions) and a second peak between − 12 and − 14 (western, central eastern and southern regions, Fig. 4 b). The only forested areas with soil health scores clearly on the positive side are found in northern regions. Surprisingly, the highest intrinsic soil health (part 2 score) is found in the southern regions of Europe, followed by western, central eastern and northern regions. However, here part 2 scores should be interpreted with some caution, as intrinsic soil health status of forests is at present mainly based on humus layer stratification and thickness (humus layer disturbance and soil structure data are currently not available). This likely overestimates soil health in southern regions (warm climate, nutrient rich bedrock, thus higher degradation rates and thinner humus layers) compared to northern forests (cold and moist climate, less degradation and thicker humus layers). Being strongly three-dimensional structures, forests have a high filtering capacity for air pollutants, and this is reflected in the two main soil health threats to forests: nitrogen surplus and metal contamination (Fig. 4 b). Nitrogen surplus adds 5 (northern) to 9 (western and central eastern) negative scores to soil health; nickel and mercury contamination add up to 3.5 and 1 negative scores, respectively. Metal contamination is often overlooked as a stressor in forests, however many forest soils, particularly in heavily populated or industrialized regions, retain significant metal contamination from legacy air pollution dating from the Industrial Revolution to the end of the last century. Ultimately, central eastern forests are the most degraded (cumulative score average − 10) followed by western and southern regions (-7) with the healthiest forests in northern Europe (-2). The generally high soil degradation rates in forest soils are alarming but are consistent with forest monitoring data of Europe, observing high, and alarmingly increasing rates of forest disturbance in more than one third of the forested area (Maes et al., 2023). While some of this increasing disturbance is partly induced by more frequent and more severe droughts (Potočić et al., 2021), the high nutrient imbalances due to nitrogen overloading is identified as one severe driver of forest decline (Krüger et al., 2020). The results underpin the call for a stronger representation of forest soils in the proposed European Soil Monitoring and Resilience Law (Wellbrock et al., 2024). Discussion Our regional patterns align well with recent assessments by Panagos et al. (2024) and Prăvălie et al. (2024) (see comparison Figure S2.1), with the lowest degradation in northern regions, followed by western, central eastern and southern regions. It could be discussed that within SHERPA all soil degradation processes are offset against each other without being weighted in some capacity. We argue that weighting of parameters will insert a subjective view of severity of disturbance or threat and will as a result limit the usability of a key to specific contexts only. And how can one objectively determine whether the long-term toxicity of heavy metal contamination poses a greater threat than the structural degradation caused by soil compaction? Or, as a further example, if the degradation process due to erosion is more or less harmful than nitrogen surplus? Therefore, we provide interactive maps (see link in subtitles of Figs. 2 – 4 ), where at each assessed point the intrinsic soil health (Part2) as well as the negative scoring of each Part1 soil degradation processes is presented. Thus, anyone can use the information needed for specific questions in specific regions. In using these interactive maps, we would like to point out how to handle this point information appropriately: some degradation processes as well as soil parameters were extracted from published maps with coarse resolution (Table S2.2). As long as no detailed monitoring data of all parameters is available, we suggest evaluating the quantitative data of SHERPA, in not using an absolute way for point or site assessment, but to compare regions, land use types and dynamics of soil degradation processes only. Regarding heavy metal pollution, each element is considered separately with potentially contributing to the overall health score with a maximum of -9 scores (e.g., a maximum contamination with all 10 heavy metals would result in a negative score of -90 for heavy metal contamination only). The presence of multiple co-contaminants not only exacerbates overall toxicity through potential synergistic and additive effects (Lin et al., 2024; Olaniran et al., 2013; Qu et al., 2024) but also significantly complicates remediation efforts, as each additional pollutant introduces unique chemical interactions and sometimes opposite properties which challenges remediation, or containment strategies (Li et al., 2025; Lin et al., 2024). Even though heavy metal contamination in Europe is not the main driver of soil degradation, it does influence soil health scores significantly as it shifts the soil health score by a maximum of 4.9, 6.3 and 6.9 points to the negative side in cropland, grassland and forest soils, respectively. Soil biodiversity is not considered explicitly in our indicator set, even though recent discussion on soil health highly recommends or even requests a greater inclusion of biological indicators in soil health assessments (Bünemann et al., 2018; Harris et al., 2022; Lehmann et al., 2020; van der Putten et al., 2023). There is no doubt that soil organisms play a central role in soil functioning, but finding a pan EU indicator is challenging. Even though a recent study showed an expected decrease in microbial diversity and significant differences in microbial community structure from forests to extensively used grasslands to highly managed intensively used crop lands (Labouyrie et al., 2023), these changes are still far from being fully understood. Furthermore, the study only illustrated the changes from one land-use type to another, not the effect of disturbance or degradation within land-use types (Labouyrie et al., 2023), which are necessary for assessing soil health quantitatively. As we want to keep SHERPA an open concept to be continuously improved or adapted generally or regionally we do not rule out that with the recent rapid developments in soil biology as well as big data evaluations the consideration of genotypic and phenotypic community diversity parameters with molecular DNA and/or RNA screening within regular monitoring programs might hold potential to specify a future version of SHERPA to certain regions, conditions or even in general. Recent discussion on soil health and quality suggest that extrinsic factors, including parent material, climate, topography and hydrology, may substantially influence the potential values of soil properties to such a degree that it is impossible to establish universal target values, particularly in absolute terms, and that soil health is not a readily quantifiable or measurable entity (Bünemann et al., 2018; Harris et al., 2022). However, as our results show, in following a decision tree concept rather than a fixed indicator combination for the intrinsic soil health we can differentiate between specific environmental settings and single out degradation and disturbance from healthy soil systems. This then offers an additional lens through which soil assessment can be undertaken to contribute to more informed goal setting and effective decision making. As such, the results of SHERPA which might be judged preliminary due to the lack of high resolution monitoring data for all parameters necessary can contribute to better access and monitoring of soil health in the EU as this is one of the main four objectives in the Soil Mission. The tool should not necessarily be seen as an end in itself, but as offering a new structured way of developing an assessment of soil health and required management to retain or restore soils into a healthier status. Also, SHERPA clearly visualizes the need for better monitoring of soil data, mainly soil structure, compaction, high resolution pesticide input and the disturbance of humus layer in forest soils. Furthermore, SHERPA scores can be used to monitor soil health trends over time and across regions, assess the severity of different soil threats, inform policy measures, aid goal setting for management and may eventually help evaluate the economic costs of soil degradation and restoration. Declarations Acknowledgements: We thank Peter Schad and Sabine Rumpf for discussion and input on an early version of the SHERPA concept. This research has received funding from Horizon Europe and Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), grant agreement no. 101086179, AI4SoilHealth. References Arias-Navarro, C., Baritz, R. and Jones, A., 2024. The state of soils in Europe. Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/7007291, JRC137600. 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Supplementary Files SupportingInformation1EuropeanSoilHealthAssesmentKey16042025final.pdf Supporting Information 1: The SHERPA concept SupportingInformation2papSherpa16042025.pdf Supporting Information 2: Supplementary Data tables and figures Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. 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Alewell","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAABGElEQVRIie3QPUsDMRjA8ec4uCyPzZpD8TNkqg6l91USCplKEQQXod50nYprxS+hy9HNHBm6xN3B4bo72O06aE26KHI9V4f8h3AJ9yMvAKHQf4wB6P0IELkPOOmRHEDmfgE7iNgTbwET1H8TAAE/CHOzqIPQ+/m62jbnEwpxrTfFAJP0rV+vl8MMyLNu3eR1xQ0KdpnmCa/uCoXJ8fiMSzuSOU5EG+FMgXF3kQ8auDkqjSd9JotYAEN+iFSNI0+avJuPcucOZj25ybqIRr8LIDdRqd310RMT5QcIe3EHQ8XkwuBFNf8cuUdWV0zalSxw3EroQsWbZjCVt7PZY93Y4Sklpky3y+uMEttKvot/LyTd/4dCoVCooy971Vt3iC50yQAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9295-9806","institution":"University of Basel","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Christine","middleName":"","lastName":"Alewell","suffix":""},{"id":446519449,"identity":"8c44f709-4cf3-43f5-afb4-885635953d80","order_by":1,"name":"Surya Gupta","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Basel","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Surya","middleName":"","lastName":"Gupta","suffix":""},{"id":446519450,"identity":"130ca687-934e-4641-b5aa-4bb81776f68a","order_by":2,"name":"Jérôme Poulenard","email":"","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0810-0308","institution":"EDYTEM, Université Savoie Mont-Blanc, CNRS","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Jérôme","middleName":"","lastName":"Poulenard","suffix":""},{"id":446519451,"identity":"7da66f23-7788-4d8b-992b-d49d68cfa963","order_by":3,"name":"Noémie Niquille","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"EDYTEM, Université Savoie Mont-Blanc, CNRS","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Noémie","middleName":"","lastName":"Niquille","suffix":""},{"id":446519452,"identity":"335b0cc1-817f-40b4-bdcc-024b2a2f4330","order_by":4,"name":"Antonia Kaiser","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Deparment of Social Sciences, University of Basel","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Antonia","middleName":"","lastName":"Kaiser","suffix":""},{"id":446519453,"identity":"ad87ce58-4310-4a71-92ac-b2459ae0ccd5","order_by":5,"name":"Nima Shokri","email":"","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6799-4888","institution":"Institute of Geo-Hydro-informatics, Hamburg University of Technology","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Nima","middleName":"","lastName":"Shokri","suffix":""},{"id":446519454,"identity":"8d993f03-3aa5-4a4c-aa25-4a95a6cec39f","order_by":6,"name":"Simon Scheper","email":"","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8097-673X","institution":"Dr. Simon Scheper, Research, Consulting, Teaching","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Simon","middleName":"","lastName":"Scheper","suffix":""},{"id":446519455,"identity":"6808c144-9151-4c0b-8278-62d9fd2dfb27","order_by":7,"name":"Miriam Gross-Schmölders","email":"","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0281-4871","institution":"Agroscope","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Miriam","middleName":"","lastName":"Gross-Schmölders","suffix":""},{"id":446519456,"identity":"0c3f4c48-3797-4ceb-9e4f-811cc2829545","order_by":8,"name":"David Robinson","email":"","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7290-4867","institution":"Centre for Ecology \u0026 Hydrology","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"David","middleName":"","lastName":"Robinson","suffix":""},{"id":446519457,"identity":"0607ebe1-1ca0-487c-a29e-4f7edd9c0228","order_by":9,"name":"Grant Campbell","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Institute of Biological \u0026 Environmental Sciences, University of Aberdeen","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Grant","middleName":"","lastName":"Campbell","suffix":""},{"id":446519458,"identity":"8d9e92bf-5737-437f-8304-682436c7e699","order_by":10,"name":"Cezary Kabała","email":"","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9796-3716","institution":"Wroclaw University of Environmental and Life Sciences (WUELS)","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Cezary","middleName":"","lastName":"Kabała","suffix":""},{"id":446519459,"identity":"c7a4d7f4-73c4-44b5-aa8a-4ad242498f67","order_by":11,"name":"Friederike Lang","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"University of Freiburg","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Friederike","middleName":"","lastName":"Lang","suffix":""},{"id":446519460,"identity":"45477a71-e5b2-4968-9f29-6af76625b8f2","order_by":12,"name":"Nancy Dise","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Centre for Ecology and Hydrology","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Nancy","middleName":"","lastName":"Dise","suffix":""},{"id":446519461,"identity":"fdfc801b-0c1e-4a68-9c68-4ebb06092c73","order_by":13,"name":"Panos Panagos","email":"","orcid":"https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1484-2738","institution":"European Commission, Joint Research Centre","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Panos","middleName":"","lastName":"Panagos","suffix":""},{"id":446519462,"identity":"8ecc9cbc-6293-47c5-bbbd-8d07dea67605","order_by":14,"name":"Pasquale Borrelli","email":"","orcid":"","institution":"Environmental Geosciences, University of Basel","correspondingAuthor":false,"prefix":"","firstName":"Pasquale","middleName":"","lastName":"Borrelli","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-04-17 09:06:07","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-6470019/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-6470019/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":81349500,"identity":"bf2489bb-e2fe-4fa9-bfef-01336680d01a","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-04-25 06:00:55","extension":"png","order_by":1,"title":"Figure 1","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":573931,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eConcept of SHERPA including one hypothetical example to calculate soil health. See all considered degradation processes of part 1 in Table S2.1.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"floatimage1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-6470019/v1/8ef3369c519f37aafe8815d1.png"},{"id":81349497,"identity":"98a94faf-99de-49a4-9a3b-d12defd04431","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-04-25 06:00:55","extension":"png","order_by":2,"title":"Figure 2","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":541340,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eSoil health assessment in European cropland soils (colours demarcate Central Eastern, Northern, Southern, WesternEurope with n= 1123, 271, 1191, 1059, respectively. Total n= 3644. Note that n depends on and varies with data availabilityof all parameters). a) Distribution of assessed points. For interactive maps to assess contribution of single processes to the final score see \u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1LdyqCR4hiMQz2J8JLLroSd4LxWPTlok\u0026amp;usp=sharing\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e. b) Frequency distribution of SHERPA’s soil health scores and c) cumulative plot of SHERPA scores for the single soil degradation processes.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"floatimage2.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-6470019/v1/ea6756682a4aceef38bbfacb.png"},{"id":81350611,"identity":"7efe90df-578c-4d81-bff0-3069dd33c24e","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-04-25 06:16:55","extension":"png","order_by":3,"title":"Figure 3","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":280969,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eSoil health assessment in European grassland soils (colours demarcate Central Eastern, Northern, Southern, WesternEurope with n= 83, 20, 16, 345, respectively. Total n=464. Note that n depends on and varies with data availability of all parameters). a) Distribution of assessed points. For interactive maps to assess contribution of single processes to the final score see \u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1LdyqCR4hiMQz2J8JLLroSd4LxWPTlok\u0026amp;usp=sharing\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e b) Frequency distribution of SHERPA soil health scores and c) cumulative plot of SHERPA scores for the single soil degradation processes.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"floatimage3.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-6470019/v1/75f282b6149ef20a07fd51fe.png"},{"id":81349506,"identity":"7e4a7861-f737-4f26-b96d-3d805c0a93a7","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-04-25 06:00:56","extension":"png","order_by":4,"title":"Figure 4","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"figure","size":230217,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"\u003cp\u003eSoil health assessment in European forest soils (colours demarcate Central Eastern, Northern, Southern, WesternEurope, with n= 54, 44,13, 75, respectively. Total n=186. Note that n depends on and varies with data availability of all parameters). a) Distribution of assessed points. For interactive maps to assess contribution of single processes to the final score see \u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1LdyqCR4hiMQz2J8JLLroSd4LxWPTlok\u0026amp;usp=sharing\"\u003elink\u003c/a\u003e b) Frequency distribution of SHERPA soil health scores and c) cumulative plot of SHERPA scores for the single soil degradation processes.\u003c/p\u003e","description":"","filename":"floatimage4.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-6470019/v1/6d407d62a4f0d4ccfbaec381.png"},{"id":81351152,"identity":"e9a05429-0d6b-4c2d-a4a7-514150f28709","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-04-25 06:24:56","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":1661787,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-6470019/v1/7bde69ca-a1bc-4ce6-b151-50aaf4d553d4.pdf"},{"id":81349516,"identity":"c072b4f3-73d6-476f-978f-9a0ae8cc668f","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-04-25 06:00:56","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":2383517,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"Supporting Information 1: The SHERPA concept","description":"","filename":"SupportingInformation1EuropeanSoilHealthAssesmentKey16042025final.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-6470019/v1/021b49c028600bd91d32f051.pdf"},{"id":81350315,"identity":"ee2412a3-ed32-4275-bcfa-636dbb5c971d","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-04-25 06:08:55","extension":"pdf","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":760463,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"Supporting Information 2: Supplementary Data tables and figures","description":"","filename":"SupportingInformation2papSherpa16042025.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-6470019/v1/add5680b08b5fbbfb58a2782.pdf"}],"financialInterests":"There is \u003cb\u003eNO\u003c/b\u003e Competing Interest.","formattedTitle":"Assessing soil health quantitatively at European scale considering soil genesis","fulltext":[{"header":"Need for a clear quantitative definition of soil health","content":"\u003cp\u003eReduced soil health is increasingly recognized as one of the most critical threats to European food security, aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity, and climate change mitigation (Panagos et al., 2024a). Due to soil\u0026rsquo;s broad environmental and societal functions, soil scientists request that soil health should be legally recognized as a common good (Lehmann et al., 2020). In response, the European Union (EU) has identified soil health as one of five Mission themes (Arias-Navarro et al., 2024), representing a new approach to addressing some of Earth\u0026rsquo;s greatest challenges. The EU Soil Strategy for 2030 (European Commission, 2021) was launched to combat declining soil health in Europe and beyond. The ambition is for the entirety of Europe to have healthy soils by 2050 (Arias-Navarro et al., 2024) with a European Soil Monitoring \u0026amp; Resilience Law (SML, 2023) recognizing the ecosystem services provided by healthy soils. Although an awareness is growing that healthy soils are the basis of a healthy society, anchoring this view into policy is still a challenge (van der Putten et al., 2023), with one of the most difficult tasks to define and quantify soil health. To make the EU\u0026rsquo;s Soil Monitoring Law operational, soil health needs to be measurable (van der Putten et al., 2023) and requires a legal framework to address the multitude of processes that are involved in land degradation.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThe comparison of soil health to human health was established as early as the 1990s (Doran and Parkin, 1994), where a physician assesses various bodily functions, including temperature, blood pressure, pulse rate, and specific blood or urine analyses. In addition to these measurements, the physician must also observe visible indicators of health, which can be regarded as intrinsic health characteristics. In contrast, soils represent intricate systems characterized by potentially high biodiversity, influenced by both physical and chemical parameters in situ and ex situ. Consequently, the evaluation of soil health is considerably more complex than that of human health, particularly since there is no individual present to provide information regarding its well-being. Numerous reviews, assessments and concepts of soil health have been published in recent years (e.g., (B\u0026uuml;nemann et al., 2018; Doran and Parkin, 1994; Guo, 2021; Harris et al., 2022; Lehmann et al., 2020)). However, there are less than a handful that attempt to provide and end-to-end solution (Lehmann et al., 2020). The recognition of the extensive and critical issue of soil degradation in Europe is often approached through oversimplified methods that rely on a 'convergence of evidence' perspective, indicating that 60\u0026ndash;70% of soils are in a non-healthy state (Panagos et al., 2024b; Pravalie et al., 2024). However, there remains a significant gap in the establishment of a clear and quantifiable framework for the monitoring, protection, and management of soil health, which is essential for enabling a quantitative assessment of soil condition. Such definitions are crucial for effective monitoring, management, policy decisions, and implementation. Finding efficient, easy-to-measure indicators for soil health is challenging, because there is no one-size-fits-all indicator for the multifunctionality of soil (B\u0026uuml;nemann et al., 2018; Doran and Parkin, 1994).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eHere, a two-step procedure, that recognizes soil health through emergent properties that can become degraded by overuse forms the conceptual basis of the approach taken. We propose SHERPA (Soil Health Evaluation, Rating Protocol, and Assessment) as a framework, where in a first part a ruling out of the most important soil threats is undertaken (refining and expanding the original idea as in (Panagos et al., 2024b; Prăvălie et al., 2024). The second part goes beyond this to assess the intrinsic soil health status with key indicators of emergence associated with healthy soil profile development. The indicator uses, for example, soil genetic factors such as climate and environment (pedo-climatic regions), surface cover, soil management and soil structure to assess soil health in a decision tree logic (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e; supporting information 1 for the full key). SHERPA represents a framework that embodies these concepts and generates a score that can be interpreted as the health of the soil in an objective and quantifiable way. This score can be used to monitor trends over time and across regions, assess the severity of different soil threats, inform policy measures, aid goal setting for management and may eventually help evaluate the economic costs of soil degradation and restoration.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"The SHERPA framework","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe European Soil Monitoring \u0026amp; Resilience Law defines soil health as ‘the physical, chemical and biological condition of the soil determining its capacity to function as a vital living system and to provide ecosystem services’ (SML, 2023). Our working definition of soil health for SHERPA is that a soil is healthy if its natural functions in relation to its land use type are not subject to degradation in any significant way. SHERPA quantifies, in its first part, all major soil threats as ruling out criteria while in the second part, the negative scores of these threats are set against (e.g., subtracted from) positive scores indicative of intrinsic soil health based on soil genesis, as the embodiment of complexity and emergence, under specific environmental and land use conditions (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig1\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e1\u003c/span\u003e).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eA detailed description of how degradation processes as well as intrinsic soil health was assessed is described in the supporting information including all data sources and spatial resolution (see Supporting Information 1 for the full SHERPA protocol). Part 1 (Soil degradation processes) considers the main soil degradation processes dependent on relevance and data availability for the three land-use types (Supporting Information 2, Table S2.1; for all scientific background as well as justification of score assignment please see Supporting Information 1, for data sources and their spatial resolution see Supporting Information 2, Table S2.2). Part 2 (intrinsic soil health assessment) evaluates the inherent health of soil not through generic thresholds based on a combination of parameters, but by examining fundamental soil characteristics that signify healthy soils within specific land use contexts and environmental conditions. This assessment follows a decision tree framework that is informed by the understanding of soil formation, which is influenced by factors such as geology, mineralogy, climate, altitude, surface cover, and land management practices. It is essential to consider the concept of soil health in relation to the processes of soil formation, or pedogenesis, which includes both the progressive development of soils and the particular evolutionary stage reached by a specific soil type. This perspective is deeply rooted in the European tradition of soil science. While our methodology for soil study considers practical and operational aspects, it remains fundamentally anchored in post-Darwinian natural sciences, which explicitly recognize the evolutionary context of the subject. Ultimately, the objective is to maintain the SHERPA key as streamlined as possible, making it appropriate for large-scale monitoring.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWe applied SHERPA using data sets from the Europe-wide LUCAS soil sampling for cropland and grassland soils (Land Use/Cover Area frame statistical Survey Soil; (Orgiazzi et al., 2018)), as well as the International Co-operative Programme on Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Forest (ICP forest; \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttp://icp-forests.net/\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"http://icp-forests.net/\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e; (Ferretti and Fischer, 2013; Haußmann and Fischer, 2004; Puletti et al., 2019)). We combined these with available studies on degradation processes (see Table S2.2) to conduct a statistically robust initial assessment across Europe. It is important to emphasize that we assessed point data only as any kind of extrapolation and scaling into maps would not adequately address the highly heterogeneous nature of soil health. However, due to the lack of data required, we relied for some parameters on data extracted from published maps (see Table S2.2).\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec3\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Soil health in Europe per land use type as indicated by SHERPA","content":"\u003cp\u003eSHERPA results allow for the first time (i) a quantitative assessment of severity of the different risk factors for the soil, and (ii) a yardstick by which different soils in different regions may be compared.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot surprisingly, and as reported previously (Panagos et al., 2024b; Prăvălie et al., 2024), cropland soils are highly degraded with 66.5% of these soils shown to have a negative overall soil health score between − 20 and − 30 (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003eb).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs such, the majority of cropland soils in Europe are affected substantially by several soil degradation processes as each single process has a maximum negative score of -9. Comparing the different geographical regions of Europe (EUROVOC, 2025), southern European cropland soils are the most degraded (average score-29) followed by central and western European soils (-24) and northern croplands being the least affected (-16; Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003ec). The degradation processes affecting cropland the most, are soil erosion (medium severity between − 2.5 in northern to -5 in southern regions), nitrogen (severe impact of -7 to -9) and phosphorus surplus (medium − 1.5 in western to 4.5 in southern regions) as well as pesticide input (medium to severe impact of -2.7 in northern to -7.7 in southern regions, Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003ec). Please note that a direct comparison of scores between processes are not meaningful as these scores indicate the severity of a degradation process within the reported occurrence but no weighting between different processes. While the latter results of high soil degradation in European croplands are nothing new, this clear nutrient overload alongside high pesticide risk, is consistent with the dramatic ongoing and ever accelerating biodiversity decline in Europe (Pereira et al., 2024) with both soils and adjacent waters being affected.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAccording to SHERPA scores, there are currently no healthy permanent grasslands in Europe, with the highest frequency of soil health scores are calculated between − 20 and − 30 indicating high rates of soil degradation (~ 77% of all assessed grassland soils) especially in central-eastern and western Europe with northern regions being clearly distributed more to the right side indicating less degradation (note that at current data availability sample numbers differ significantly with 345, 83, 20, 16 for western, central eastern, northern and southern grasslands, respectively, Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003eb). While the average of northern grasslands finalizes with − 16, averages of Southern and Western European grasslands score much lower with − 26 (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003eb). Thus, surprisingly, SHERPA indicates that soil health in European grasslands is not better than in croplands. This is consistent with most grasslands being affected by at least two or three degradation processes (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003ea). The same pattern is indicated by the cumulative degradation plot for grasslands (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig3\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e3\u003c/span\u003ec) with southern Europe having the highest rates of soil erosion and southern, western and central eastern regions showing to have higher nitrogen and phosphorus surplus as well as pesticide risk compared to northern regions. The soil degradation processes affecting the SHERPA score most in grasslands are nitrogen (-7 to – 9) and phosphorus surplus (-6 to -9) as well as pesticide risk (-3 to -6) followed by soil erosion (-0.6 to -2). The latter is consistent with the reports of high and still dramatically proceeding decline in biodiversity loss in European agricultural lands, which is of course partly due to the impact of cropland land, but, as demonstrated by SHERPA scores, is also attributed to the nutrient overloading and pesticide input into grasslands (and, of course, from croplands and grasslands to the adjacent waters). However, we need to state, that there is a high uncertainty assessing the pesticide risk in extracting the data from (Tang et al., 2021) with a resolution of 10 km. Thus, for future assessment better data availability of pesticide use would enable to calculate pesticide load indicators as suggested by (Kudsk et al., 2018) and (Lewis et al., 2021) for the UK and Denmark which potentially decreases uncertainty of pesticide risk.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn European forests, soil health scores are clearly more positive compared to grasslands and croplands with one peak in frequency distribution between − 2 and − 5 (all regions) and a second peak between − 12 and − 14 (western, central eastern and southern regions, Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig4\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003eb). The only forested areas with soil health scores clearly on the positive side are found in northern regions. Surprisingly, the highest intrinsic soil health (part 2 score) is found in the southern regions of Europe, followed by western, central eastern and northern regions. However, here part 2 scores should be interpreted with some caution, as intrinsic soil health status of forests is at present mainly based on humus layer stratification and thickness (humus layer disturbance and soil structure data are currently not available). This likely overestimates soil health in southern regions (warm climate, nutrient rich bedrock, thus higher degradation rates and thinner humus layers) compared to northern forests (cold and moist climate, less degradation and thicker humus layers).\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeing strongly three-dimensional structures, forests have a high filtering capacity for air pollutants, and this is reflected in the two main soil health threats to forests: nitrogen surplus and metal contamination (Fig.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig4\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003eb). Nitrogen surplus adds 5 (northern) to 9 (western and central eastern) negative scores to soil health; nickel and mercury contamination add up to 3.5 and 1 negative scores, respectively. Metal contamination is often overlooked as a stressor in forests, however many forest soils, particularly in heavily populated or industrialized regions, retain significant metal contamination from legacy air pollution dating from the Industrial Revolution to the end of the last century. Ultimately, central eastern forests are the most degraded (cumulative score average − 10) followed by western and southern regions (-7) with the healthiest forests in northern Europe (-2). The generally high soil degradation rates in forest soils are alarming but are consistent with forest monitoring data of Europe, observing high, and alarmingly increasing rates of forest disturbance in more than one third of the forested area (Maes et al., 2023). While some of this increasing disturbance is partly induced by more frequent and more severe droughts (Potočić et al., 2021), the high nutrient imbalances due to nitrogen overloading is identified as one severe driver of forest decline (Krüger et al., 2020). The results underpin the call for a stronger representation of forest soils in the proposed European Soil Monitoring and Resilience Law (Wellbrock et al., 2024).\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Discussion","content":"\u003cp\u003eOur regional patterns align well with recent assessments by Panagos et al. (2024) and Prăvălie et al. (2024) (see comparison Figure S2.1), with the lowest degradation in northern regions, followed by western, central eastern and southern regions. It could be discussed that within SHERPA all soil degradation processes are offset against each other without being weighted in some capacity. We argue that weighting of parameters will insert a subjective view of severity of disturbance or threat and will as a result limit the usability of a key to specific contexts only. And how can one objectively determine whether the long-term toxicity of heavy metal contamination poses a greater threat than the structural degradation caused by soil compaction? Or, as a further example, if the degradation process due to erosion is more or less harmful than nitrogen surplus? Therefore, we provide interactive maps (see link in subtitles of Figs.\u0026nbsp;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig2\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e2\u003c/span\u003e\u0026ndash;\u003cspan refid=\"Fig4\" class=\"InternalRef\"\u003e4\u003c/span\u003e), where at each assessed point the intrinsic soil health (Part2) as well as the negative scoring of each Part1 soil degradation processes is presented. Thus, anyone can use the information needed for specific questions in specific regions. In using these interactive maps, we would like to point out how to handle this point information appropriately: some degradation processes as well as soil parameters were extracted from published maps with coarse resolution (Table S2.2). As long as no detailed monitoring data of all parameters is available, we suggest evaluating the quantitative data of SHERPA, in not using an absolute way for point or site assessment, but to compare regions, land use types and dynamics of soil degradation processes only.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eRegarding heavy metal pollution, each element is considered separately with potentially contributing to the overall health score with a maximum of -9 scores (e.g., a maximum contamination with all 10 heavy metals would result in a negative score of -90 for heavy metal contamination only). The presence of multiple co-contaminants not only exacerbates overall toxicity through potential synergistic and additive effects (Lin et al., 2024; Olaniran et al., 2013; Qu et al., 2024) but also significantly complicates remediation efforts, as each additional pollutant introduces unique chemical interactions and sometimes opposite properties which challenges remediation, or containment strategies (Li et al., 2025; Lin et al., 2024). Even though heavy metal contamination in Europe is not the main driver of soil degradation, it does influence soil health scores significantly as it shifts the soil health score by a maximum of 4.9, 6.3 and 6.9 points to the negative side in cropland, grassland and forest soils, respectively.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eSoil biodiversity is not considered explicitly in our indicator set, even though recent discussion on soil health highly recommends or even requests a greater inclusion of biological indicators in soil health assessments (B\u0026uuml;nemann et al., 2018; Harris et al., 2022; Lehmann et al., 2020; van der Putten et al., 2023). There is no doubt that soil organisms play a central role in soil functioning, but finding a pan EU indicator is challenging. Even though a recent study showed an expected decrease in microbial diversity and significant differences in microbial community structure from forests to extensively used grasslands to highly managed intensively used crop lands (Labouyrie et al., 2023), these changes are still far from being fully understood. Furthermore, the study only illustrated the changes from one land-use type to another, not the effect of disturbance or degradation within land-use types (Labouyrie et al., 2023), which are necessary for assessing soil health quantitatively. As we want to keep SHERPA an open concept to be continuously improved or adapted generally or regionally we do not rule out that with the recent rapid developments in soil biology as well as big data evaluations the consideration of genotypic and phenotypic community diversity parameters with molecular DNA and/or RNA screening within regular monitoring programs might hold potential to specify a future version of SHERPA to certain regions, conditions or even in general.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eRecent discussion on soil health and quality suggest that extrinsic factors, including parent material, climate, topography and hydrology, may substantially influence the potential values of soil properties to such a degree that it is impossible to establish universal target values, particularly in absolute terms, and that soil health is not a readily quantifiable or measurable entity (B\u0026uuml;nemann et al., 2018; Harris et al., 2022). However, as our results show, in following a decision tree concept rather than a fixed indicator combination for the intrinsic soil health we can differentiate between specific environmental settings and single out degradation and disturbance from healthy soil systems. This then offers an additional lens through which soil assessment can be undertaken to contribute to more informed goal setting and effective decision making. As such, the results of SHERPA which might be judged preliminary due to the lack of high resolution monitoring data for all parameters necessary can contribute to better access and monitoring of soil health in the EU as this is one of the main four objectives in the Soil Mission. The tool should not necessarily be seen as an end in itself, but as offering a new structured way of developing an assessment of soil health and required management to retain or restore soils into a healthier status. Also, SHERPA clearly visualizes the need for better monitoring of soil data, mainly soil structure, compaction, high resolution pesticide input and the disturbance of humus layer in forest soils. Furthermore, SHERPA scores can be used to monitor soil health trends over time and across regions, assess the severity of different soil threats, inform policy measures, aid goal setting for management and may eventually help evaluate the economic costs of soil degradation and restoration.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003ch2\u003eAcknowledgements:\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eWe thank Peter Schad and Sabine Rumpf for discussion and input on an early version of the SHERPA concept. This research has received funding from Horizon Europe and Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), grant agreement no. 101086179, AI4SoilHealth.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eArias-Navarro, C., Baritz, R. and Jones, A., 2024. The state of soils in Europe. Publications Office of the European Union. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/7007291, JRC137600.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBeck, H.E., Zimmermann, N.E., McVicar, T.R., Vergopolan, N., Berg, A. and Wood, E.F., 2018. Present and future K\u0026ouml;ppen-Geiger climate classification maps at 1-km resolution. Scientific Data, 5(1): 180214.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBorrelli, P., Panagos, P., Alewell, C., Ballabio, C., de Oliveira Fagundes, H., Haregeweyn, N., Lugato, E., Maerker, M., Poesen, J., Vanmaercke, M. and Robinson, D.A., 2023. 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Annals of Forest Science, 81(1): 22.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":true,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":false,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-6470019/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-6470019/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eSoil health degradation is a major threat to European food security, biodiversity, and climate stability. While scientists have debated how to define soil health during recent decades, a quantifiable framework for monitoring, management, and policy remains lacking. We introduce SHERPA (Soil Health Evaluation, Rating Protocol, and Assessment) as a framework and present a first assessment across Europe. Surprisingly, soil health of grasslands is as negatively impacted as cropland soils. Soil erosion, nutrient surplus, and pesticide risk are largely driving poor soil health aligning with reported high biodiversity loss in agricultural land. Forest soils are also surprisingly low in health, mainly because of nitrogen surplus, reflecting documented widespread forest decline from nutrient imbalances. Interactive maps highlight specific threats to soil health across Europe, offering valuable insights for targeted action.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Assessing soil health quantitatively at European scale considering soil genesis","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2025-04-25 06:00:51","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-6470019/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"bd081867-6d06-4bea-bd5c-628b5d78ce60","owner":[],"postedDate":"April 25th, 2025","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[{"id":47529581,"name":"Earth and environmental sciences/Environmental sciences/Environmental impact"},{"id":47529582,"name":"Earth and environmental sciences/Solid Earth sciences/Geochemistry"},{"id":47529583,"name":"Earth and environmental sciences/Environmental sciences/Environmental chemistry/Environmental monitoring"},{"id":47529584,"name":"Earth and environmental sciences/Solid Earth sciences/Sedimentology"}],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2025-04-25T06:00:51+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2025-04-25 06:00:51","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-6470019","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-6470019","identity":"rs-6470019","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}