Engaging Citizens in soil science: the road to Healthier sOils (ECHO)

ECHO的总体目标是通过生成关于欧盟土壤健康状况的新数据来补充欧盟成员国现有的土壤制图和土壤监测，并提高对土壤生态和社会重要性的认识，使欧盟公民参与土壤健康，增加他们的知识。ECHO基于3个主要原则：1)吸引公民参与，激励他们保护和恢复土壤；2)通过提供知识和在数据收集中发挥积极作用，赋予公民权力；3)让公民直接参与土壤问题的决策。ECHO将通过与目标社会群体共同创造来实现这一目标，作为逐步提高各会员国社会土壤素养的基石。ECHO将在欧盟成员国之间制定量身定制的公民科学计划，同时考虑到不同的土地利用、土壤类型和生物地理区域以及利益相关者的需求，克服与年龄、文化、背景和语言相关的公认挑战（评估了16500个地点的28个计划）。我们的目标是让公民积极参与，建立能力和知识，以促进整个欧盟的土壤管理，并通过信任和提高对土壤的理解来促进社会变革。ECHO将创建ECHOREPO，这是一个长期开放访问的存储库，提供公民科学数据，不仅供科学家使用，也供公众和最终用户使用。这将利用现有数据和其他相关土壤监测举措，并为其提供附加值。ECHO的联盟由16个参与者组成，其中包括9所顶尖大学和研究中心，5家中小企业和2家基金会。来自小公司和基金会的参与者，作为商业和民间社会的代表，是对学术合作伙伴的土壤和社会科学专家的补充，对于实现ECHO的宏伟目标至关重要。

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 decisionmaking on soil issues. ECHO will achieve this through co-creation with target societal groups as a cornerstone of delivering a stepchange 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 withcitizen 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 theambitious goals of ECHO.