The soil health assessment based on the monitoring network should be accurate, while at the same time keeping the costs of such monitoring at a reasonable level. It is therefore appropriate to lay down criteria for sampling points that are representative of the soil units reflecting a certain degree of homogeneity of soil condition under different soil types, climatic conditions and land use. It is also appropriate to consider the specific situation of the Union’s outermost regions, as listed in Article 349 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which justifies providing for specific measures to support those regions. Therefore, Member States should be able to adapt, when necessary, the obligations relating to monitoring and assessment of soil health to their outermost regions’ specific characteristics. The grid of sampling points should be determined by using geostatistical methods, be based on soil units and be sufficiently dense to provide an estimation of the area of degraded soils throughout the territory of Member States, with a margin of error of not more than 5 % at the soil unit level. That value is commonly considered to provide a statistically sound estimation and reasonable assurance that the objective concerned has been achieved. The design of the sampling survey for soil monitoring should be based on the best available information on distribution of soil properties, such as information resulting from previous national or subnational surveys, relevant measurements carried out by soil managers and measurements conducted under Union and international law or specific programmes, such as the LUCAS soil campaigns or the International Cooperative Programme on Assessment and Monitoring of Air Pollution Effects on Forests (ICP Forests). Without prejudice to obligations laid down under this Directive for the management of contaminated sites, data obtained from sampling points taken during soil investigations at contaminated sites can be used for the assessment of criteria for healthy soil condition.
Text as published in the Official Journal, reproduced verbatim (including any typographical quirks of the source). For the authentic version, see EUR-Lex.
