Soil Health Matters – Join GROW Observatory’s Actions around Europe
In a changing climate, soil health matters. Communities across Europe involved in the GROW Observatory are highlighting the importance of this precious resource – through a range of innovative events and activities – for World Soil Day 2018.
At the Visual Contemporary Arts Centre in Carlow town on Saturday, 1st December between 1300 and 1700 hours, a citizens workshop will be taking place that features theatre, talks and facilitated conversations, as part of a series of events on soil health and citizen science taking place in different European countries celebrating World Soil Day.
World Soil Day is held annually on 5th December as a means to focus attention on soil and on advocating for the sustainable management of soil resources. This year’s theme is soil pollution.
The GROW Observatory – a European-wide project engaging thousands of GROWers, researchers and people passionate about land and soil – is taking a lead on spotlighting the importance of soil health in this context. To do this, the GROW Observatory is mobilising its communities around Europe, where soil health will be front and centre of a range of actions and activities to highlight solutions to soil pollution.
The GROW Observatory has established GROW Places in 9 European countries, to enable people to act as citizen scientists and, using low-cost soil sensors, collect data that can help validate climate prediction models from satellites. This will help to forecast the frequency and intensity of extreme climate phenomena, like droughts, floods and heatwaves.
So far, citizen scientists in the GROW Communities have deployed 2,000 soil moisture sensors in the different GROW Places, setting views to 10,000 sensors in the coming year. This is considered to be the largest soil moisture survey conducted by citizens across Europe.
Finding routes to more sustainable land use and climate-friendly food growing practices is now critical to solving many local and global challenges we face. The World Soil Day coincides with COP24 – the Global Climate Summit – made all the more pressing following the IPCC’s most recent report, which gives us 12 years to collectively address climate change before runaway climate breakdown kicks in.
Citizen Science plays an important role in understanding soil health. GROW works with citizens across Europe, gathering data about soil and food growing, because Healthy Soils are key to a Healthy Future. Join us on 1st December and learn more.
When: 1 December, 1pm-5pm
Where: Visual Contemporary Arts Centre, Carlow
This is a free event open to all. More information can be found here.
Contact: Dee Sewell email: dee@greensideup.ie or Mobile 0876843374 for more information.
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