In 2023, the European Commission released a legislative proposal for a Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience which aims to define a legal framework to achieve healthy soils across the European Union (EU) by 2050. A key component of the initial Directive is the mandate for Member States to establish basic geographic soil governance units, referred to as soil districts, and appoint a district-specific authority to oversee the implementation of soil health assessments. This paper proposes an operational definition of the districts following the conditions outlined in the proposal for the Directive and discusses various attention points for their implementation. Tentative districts were developed for seven EU countries, considering soil type, climate, topography, and land cover factors, starting from the smallest existing administrative unit (i.e. municipalities). Experts were asked to report on the applicability of the proposed districts within well-known pedo-ecological regions and discuss the relevance of the districts for establishing an EU-wide monitoring network and reporting on soil health and degradation. The outcomes highlight the need for detailed soil maps to account for specific soil types when stratifying countries into soil districts. The soilscape approach allows for a consistent method to defining soil districts across Member States. This enables contrasting soils within a district to be managed in a similar manner, with soil degradation/health thresholds applied to each district based on land cover. However, it is unclear whether soil districts as currently formulated in the Directive are in fact the right tool to support local soil management and monitoring of soil health. Districts can help ensure that all soil conditions are covered in a monitoring system, but they may not provide support for soil management or monitoring at a local scale due to short-scale soil variability and threats affecting soil management within the same soilscape. Beyond the use of districts for designing a European/national scale monitoring system, the districts can help create animations and other educational tools to promote soil literacy and connectivity of users to soils locally.

中文翻译：

---

 在土壤区


2023 年，欧盟委员会发布了一项关于土壤监测和恢复力指令的立法提案，旨在定义到 2050 年在整个欧盟 （EU） 实现健康土壤的法律框架。初始指令的一个关键组成部分是授权会员国建立基本的地理土壤治理单位，称为土壤区，并指定一个特定于地区的机构来监督土壤健康评估的实施。本文根据指令提案中概述的条件提出了学区的操作定义，并讨论了实施这些学区的各种关注点。考虑了土壤类型、气候、地形和土地覆盖因素，从现有最小的行政单位（即市政府）开始，为 7 个欧盟国家制定了暂定选区。专家们报告了拟议区域在知名儿童生态区域内的适用性，并讨论了这些区域与建立欧盟范围的监测网络和报告土壤健康和退化的相关性。结果突出表明，在将国家分层为土壤区域时，需要详细的土壤地图来说明特定的土壤类型。土壤景观方法允许使用一致的方法来定义会员国的土壤区域。这使得一个地区内对比不同的土壤能够以类似的方式进行管理，根据土地覆盖对每个地区应用土壤退化/健康阈值。然而，目前尚不清楚该指令中制定的土壤区是否真的是支持当地土壤管理和土壤健康监测的正确工具。 地区可以帮助确保监测系统涵盖所有土壤条件，但由于短期土壤变化和影响同一土壤景观内土壤管理的威胁，它们可能无法为局部规模的土壤管理或监测提供支持。除了使用学区来设计欧洲/国家规模的监测系统外，学区还可以帮助创建动画和其他教育工具，以促进土壤素养和用户与当地土壤的连通性。