European Researchers Night
Soil security, essential for the future of the humanity
On the 27 of September 2024 SELVANS had a stand at the European Researchers Night that took place at the Arenal (Bilbao) from 17:00 to 21:30. This event was organized by the Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea. The focus of the European Researchers Night was on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Soil conservation and improvement is essential to achieve at least 17 of the UN SDGs, as soil functions are connected to several of humanity's existential challenges, such as climate change, food security, water security, human health, maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
Soil is a non-renewable resource at the scale of human lifetime, and is in danger. One of the problems for securing soil recourses is the lack of connection between society and soils. The activity organized by SELVANS aimed to familiarize attendees of various ages with soils and their functions. We also talked about the health of the forest soils of the Basque Country and looked at maps for different indicators (loss of organic carbon, acidification) according to the proposal for the EU Soil Monitoring and Resilience Law. But the most popular and funnier activity bringing people closer to the soil is painting with them.
Soil conservation and improvement is essential to achieve at least 17 of the UN SDGs, as soil functions are connected to several of humanity's existential challenges, such as climate change, food security, water security, human health, maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.
Soil is a non-renewable resource at the scale of human lifetime, and is in danger. One of the problems for securing soil recourses is the lack of connection between society and soils. The activity organized by SELVANS aimed to familiarize attendees of various ages with soils and their functions. We also talked about the health of the forest soils of the Basque Country and looked at maps for different indicators (loss of organic carbon, acidification) according to the proposal for the EU Soil Monitoring and Resilience Law. But the most popular and funnier activity bringing people closer to the soil is painting with them.
We used watercolors created with different soils. There is a fantastic tutorial and many examples for that by "the Art of Soil". We explained why soils have different colors, delineated limits between soil horizons on photographs of real soil profiles. There are different sources of information that help pedologists for describing and classifying soils using the sense of sight: color, presence and size of rock fragments, differences in soil structure, etc. The attendees could also use Munsell color charts and vials with soils of different colors to practice assigning colors to soil samples like pedologists do in the field when they describe and classify soil profiles. Finally, we had a small quiz to test how much they know about soils that you can check below.
Some materials supporting the activity can be found in the pdf attached below (in Spanish). The pdf has some information about the color of soils, and also the quiz about soil (without answers...).
Some materials supporting the activity can be found in the pdf attached below (in Spanish). The pdf has some information about the color of soils, and also the quiz about soil (without answers...).