Cheterrapesti - Editorial #101
Headlines
Towards Harmonized Soil Monitoring in the EU: An Inventory of Existing International and European Standards
By inventorying 574 international and European soil standards, the report supports comparable monitoring methods across member states, helping implement the EU Soil Monitoring Law through more consistent indicators and measurements.
Global study finds majority of people worldwide prioritize environmental protection over economic growth
Across 92 countries, nearly 58% of people favored environmental protection over economic growth, revealing broad, diverse public support for shifting priorities toward ecological well-being rather than growth alone when conflicts arise.
CFC replacements cause vast ‘forever chemical’ pollution – new research
CFC replacements helped heal the ozone layer, but many degrade into trifluoroacetic acid, a persistent forever chemical now accumulating globally, exposing the environmental costs of one technological fix for another.
Climate change is altering Saharan dust – and Europe is downwind
Rising heat, drier soils, and shifting winds may send more Saharan dust toward Europe, worsening air quality and stressing farming and solar energy, even as some ecosystems receive nutrients regionally.
Technosols and urban metabolism for counteracting land take and re-shaping waste flows
Waste-based technosols emerge as a circular, nature-based response to urban land take and waste accumulation, restoring ecosystem services, supporting greening, and easing pressure on fertile peri-urban land for cities worldwide.
Urban trees can absorb more CO₂ than cars emit on some summer days, Munich study shows
Munich data show trees can outweigh traffic CO₂ on some summer days, yet yearly vegetation offsets stay near 2%; grasslands often remain net emitters because soil respiration exceeds uptake citywide.
Revealed: the world’s worst mega-leaks of methane driving global heating
Satellite data exposed dozens of giant methane leaks, mostly from oil and gas sites in Turkmenistan, showing poor maintenance drives warming despite many leaks being cheap and easy to fix.
Thirty years of Italian Land Use Inventory (IUTI), a functional tool for monitoring historical changes in the national landscape
Italy’s land-use record reveals shrinking arable land and grasslands, expanding woodland and urban areas, and confirms IUTI as a reliable national framework for detecting long-term landscape transformation and supporting planning.
Why do some people eat soil? From a prisoner’s lifeline to a modern tasting menu, the history of geophagy
Geophagy has deep historical roots, serving ritual, medicinal, and survival purposes across cultures; today it survives from pregnancy cravings to gastronomy, though health agencies warn against unsafe soil consumption worldwide.
Politics
Soil Matters: CURIOSOIL Newsletter #9
Across Europe, CURIOSOIL advanced soil literacy through community workshops, participatory mapping, co-created teaching resources, and practice-based collaboration, linking educators, artists, researchers, and citizens in shared, inclusive educational action and experimentation.
Come le normative UE su ambiente e clima sono state smantellate in meno di tre anni (in Italian)
La marcia indietro del Green Deal europeo, sotto la pressione delle lobby, dei partiti di centro destra ed estrema destra e di diversi governi – con quello italiano in prima linea – sta investendo in pieno anche la politica climatica, dopo aver già ritardato, annacquato e spesso smantellato le normative ambientali. Tutto questo ha una data d’inizio precisa: il 22 novembre 2023.
Four key facts about climate change and school meal programs
School meals teach healthy, climate-friendly diets while protecting nutrition and learning; smarter procurement and resilient farming can stabilize budgets, support agriculture, and help programs feed more children under climate stress.
Tanzania is losing fertile land to soil erosion: what’s happening and what can be done
In northern Tanzania, gully erosion is accelerating as land-use change, deforestation, and overgrazing interact with fragile soils; terracing, revegetation, and better water management could protect farms, roads, and livelihoods locally.
Making a map to make a difference: Interactive GIS tool shows superfund flooding dangers
Participatory mapping at Tar Creek brought residents and researchers together to co-produce maps, turning local knowledge into shared evidence for storytelling, advocacy, education, and environmental justice action within their community.
Green to Grey – How Europe is squandering the little nature it has left
From soil to sustainability: developing collaborative research practice partnerships with urban farms
Long-term research-practice partnerships help urban farms align evidence with community priorities, combining co-design, local knowledge, and policy support to strengthen food justice, education, sustainability, and farm resilience across urban communities.
Uses, opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence in participatory urban planning
Analytical, generative, and humanized AI could widen participatory urban planning through feedback analysis, visualization, and communication, but only if cities manage privacy, misinformation, opacity, and automated decision-making transparently and responsibly.
Yes, AI could boost productivity, but work is about more than maximising output
Faster output alone cannot define good work: jobs also provide meaning, identity, learning, and social connection, so unmanaged AI adoption could deepen alienation even when efficiency measurably improves for workers.
How artists are tracking environmental change through poetry, film and sound
Poetry, film, and sound are being used to preserve residents’ environmental memories of urban change, turning lived observations of wind, light, and rivers into knowledge for climate-responsive urban planning decisions.
Science, info & more...
Crowd sensing for the environment: Citizen science and plant apps map how urbanization alters city soils and climate
Using 80 million crowd-sensed plant observations across 326 European cities, researchers mapped hidden soil and climate gradients, showing built-up areas homogenize while forests preserve diversity, cooling, and moisture within cities.
Catchment planning boosts impact of small water retention measures
Strategically combining small water-retention measures across whole catchments can better reduce erosion, drought, flooding, and nutrient runoff than isolated actions, especially when farmers and authorities plan implementation together locally effectively.
Using data to reduce subjectivity in landslide susceptibility mapping
Comparing landslide models in São Sebastião, Gaussian AHP outperformed traditional AHP, reducing subjectivity and uncertainty while mapping high-risk areas more coherently, offering a more reproducible tool for hazard management planning.
New approach improves precipitation accuracy for hydrological models
A stepwise precipitation back-correction method improved hydrological model calibration, raising performance across U.S. and Brazilian watersheds by correcting rainfall uncertainty while preserving water balance within acceptable ranges during reanalysis tests.
How soil microbes may control the future of our planet
Soil moisture determines whether warming drives carbon loss or storage: drought-stressed microbes release ancient carbon, whereas wetter soils retain more, making microbial processes essential for accurately predicting future climate feedbacks.
Crop rotation differentially increases soil bacterial and fungal diversities in global croplands: a meta-analysis
Across global croplands, crop rotation increased bacterial diversity and fungal turnover differently, with stronger microbial gains under certain crop transitions, longer rotations, and higher yields, supporting more sustainable farming worldwide.
Earthquake scientists reveal how overplowing weakens soil at experimental farm
Fiber-optic sensing revealed that repeated plowing and heavy machinery disrupt soil pore networks, reducing deep water infiltration and weakening crops’ capacity to resist both flooding and drought under agriculture worldwide.