Project description
Empowering citizens to preserve soil health
European soil health faces a critical challenge, threatening ecosystems and livelihoods. Degraded soils endanger agriculture, biodiversity and water quality. In this context, the EU-funded ECHO project aims to empower citizens through soil knowledge, data collection and decision-making. Its overarching goal is to actively involve EU citizens. Specifically, it operates on three core principles: engagement, empowerment, and enabling. It aims to motivate citizens to protect and restore soils, provide them with knowledge and an active role in data collection, and to empower them to participate in decision-making on soil-related matters. Tailored citizen science initiatives will span different regions and address diverse stakeholder needs. The project will create ECHOREPO, an open-access repository, facilitating the dissemination of citizen-generated data.
Objective
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 on the ecological and societal importance of soils. ECHO is based on 3 main principles: 1) to engage citizens motivating them to protect and restore soils; 2) to empower citizens by providing knowledge and an active role in data collection; 3) 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 across Member States. ECHO will develop tailor-made citizen science initiatives across EU Member States taking into account different land-uses, soil types and biogeographical regions as well as 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 building the capacities and knowledge to promote soil stewardship across 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 not only by scientists but also by 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 consists of 16 participants with 9 leading universities and research centres, 5 SMEs, and 2 Foundations. The participants from small companies and foundations, as business and civil society representatives, are complementary to the soil and social sciences experts of academic partners and crucial to achieve the ambitious goals of ECHO.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.2.6 - Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment
MAIN PROGRAMME
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HORIZON.2.2 - Culture, creativity and inclusive society
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HORIZON.2.4 - Digital, Industry and Space
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HORIZON.2.3 - Civil Security for Society
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MISS-2022-SOIL-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
39100 Bolzano
Italy
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.