Making the value of soil visible

HUB BERN | Project LANAT-1

Our goal:

To develop an innovative, time-saving method for mapping soil properties, thus creating a solid foundation for decision-making in various fields.

This morainal Molasse hill near Meikirch is typical of the landscape found on the Swiss Plateau in the Canton of Bern. Geology and landform are among the most important factors shaping soils and their properties. Photo: Simon Tanner, HAFL

In a nutshell:

Soil provides a variety of important services, including nutrient and water storage, carbon sequestration, erosion control, a habitat for organisms, water purification, and resource provision. Access to standardized, high-resolution, and reproducible soil data is essential for agriculture and forestry, spatial planning, climate adaptation, and groundwater protection. It is also key for the physical, chemical, and biological protection of soil, as well as for biodiversity conservation. Until now, however, such data were lacking for Switzerland as a whole, including the Canton of Bern. Our project addresses this gap by providing comprehensive soil data for the Canton of Bern.

The project seeks to answer the following questions:

• What innovative approach can we use to collect key data supporting the sustainable use of soil as a resource in sufficiently high quality but at more frequent intervals than before?

  
  

• How can we optimize the interaction of the different technologies, work steps, and stakeholders in a highly complex and large-scale project?

  
  

• How, and by means of what products, can we best put the documented soil properties to use as services that the soil provides for climate protection, biodiversity, spatial planning, and sustainable agriculture?

The project will be completed in mid-2025 and the data made available on the geoportal of the Canton of Bern. In a subsequent step, the findings will be put into practice.

The project is being carried out by the School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences (HAFL) at Bern University of Applied Sciences, in close cooperation with the Swiss Soil Competence Center (KOBO).

Calibration day for mapping staff. Ensuring consistent quality in soil data collection requires knowledge transfer, the training of mapping personnel, and cross-verified calibration. Photo: Simon Tanner, HAFL

Top 65 cm of a soil profile wall. Soil properties are best assessed by examining a soil profile wall. This involves recording specific parameters in the field and collecting soil samples for subsequent chemical analysis in the laboratory. Photo: Simon Tanner, HAFL

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In collaboration with:

Office for Agriculture and Nature of the Canton of Bern (LANAT)

Status: Ongoing project