ICCRAM expertise in cost-effective soil biodiversity monitoring and field validation

ICCRAM – University of Burgos (Spain) – is interested in joining a consortium addressing Area B: Soil Biodiversity for the Soil Monitoring Law under HORIZON-NATURE-2027-02-05.

ICCRAM combines soil science, environmental biotechnology, microbial ecology, soil-health assessment, field experimentation, proximal/remote sensing and environmental data integration. We can help operationalise biodiversity monitoring approaches under real field conditions and connect biological information with soil properties, land management, degradation pressures and restoration outcomes.

We can contribute to:

·   statistically robust soil-sampling strategies and field protocols for agricultural, contaminated, saline and restored soils;

·   physicochemical and soil-health indicators to contextualise bacterial, fungal and wider soil-biodiversity data;

·   field designs compatible with DNA metabarcoding and microbiome analysis;

·   validation of monitoring methods across contrasting soil conditions and management gradients;

·   integration of biological, soil, proximal-sensing, UAV/remote-sensing and spatial datasets;

·   assessment of cost-effectiveness, scalability, reproducibility and practical implementation of monitoring schemes;

·   FAIR environmental-data workflows, harmonised indicators and links to policy-relevant soil monitoring.

We are interested in leading or co-leading field demonstration/validation, soil sampling and monitoring, or data-integration tasks.