The urban soil resource: undiscovered and undervalued?

Urban soil resourcesMore than half of the world's population is living in urbanized areas.

Urbanization and industrialization processes can strongly influence soil characteristics. At the same time, urban soil plays a critical role as provider of many ecosystem services to the urban population, e.g. by means of supporting plant growth, carbon storage, controlling the bio-availability of pollutants, or water filtration.

Yet, relatively little is known about soil in the urban environment, its chemical, biological and physical soil properties and spatial patterns.

What we do

We characterize, classify and evaluate soils in the urban environment.

This is necessary to optimize ecosystem services delivered by urban soil through sustainable soil management and urban planning.

Impact

  • Insight into urban soil properties
  • A methodology to classify urban soil
  • The possibility to predict spatial patterns of urban soil properties from legacy soil data
  • Ecosystem service delivery by urban soils

Contact