ECHO

The overall aim of ECHO is to engage EU citizens in soil health, increasing their knowledge by generating new data on the health status of EU soils to complement existing soil mapping and soil monitoring in EU Member States and awareness of the ecological and societal importance of soils. ECHO is based on three main principles: to engage citizens by motivating them to protect and restore soils, to empower citizens by providing knowledge and an active role in data collection, and to enable citizens to directly participate in decision-making on soil issues. ECHO will achieve this through co-creation with target societal groups as a cornerstone of delivering a step change in increased soil literacy in society. 

ECHO will develop tailor-made citizen science initiatives across EU Member States considering different land uses, soil types, biogeographical regions, and stakeholder needs, overcoming the recognised challenges related to age, culture, background and language (28 initiatives with 16500 sites assessed). 

Our ambition is to actively involve and engage citizens in building the capacities and knowledge to promote soil stewardship across the EU and foster social change through trust and improved understanding of soil. ECHO will create ECHOREPO, a long-term open-access repository fed with citizen science data to be exploited by scientists, the general public, and end-users. This will leverage and provide added value to existing data and other relevant soil monitoring initiatives. 

ECHO´s consortium comprises 16 participants, nine leading universities and research centres, 5 SMEs, and 2 Foundations. As business and civil society representatives, the participants from small companies and foundations are complementary to academic partners' soil and social sciences experts and crucial to achieving ECHO's ambitious goals.