World-first data ‘cube’ to revolutionise soil health mapping

Growers and land managers will be able to access future and historical soil health data from a revolutionary new soil health ‘cube’ that has used AI to build a digital earth twin.

The EU Soil Health Data Cube is a layered map, which integrates thousands of observations and data points on soil, climate and vegetation using high-powered computing and artificial intelligence (AI).

Due to be available to growers as an app by 2026, the tool can map soil down to a depth of 30 metres with the addition of vegetation cover and covers over 20 million European crop field boundaries. The first iteration of its mapping is available now, with thousands data points set to be added over the next three years. 

“This is probably the most sophisticated soil health modelling framework to date and will be an indispensable tool for those involved in regenerative agriculture, carbon farming, and those looking to change farming land use systems – such as realising soil carbon sequestration potential, shifting to agroforestry and similar,” said AI 4 Soil Health scientist, Tomislav Hengl. 

“We will be able to provide the modelling capability to empower them with real world evidence while significantly reducing the cost, time and labour involved in traditional soil monitoring practices.”

Using the work of 100 scientists, the cube currently maps soil health from 2000 to 2022 and will provide open source data representing European landscape and soil properties in space and time. It can also potentially be used to simulate complex scenarios and accurately predict, test and model real world solutions.

Scientists are now developing the data cube over the next three years by populating it with additional point data and new remote sensing data, with the help of partner organisations running practical trials on the ground. 

The project is run by the AI 4 Soil Health partnership, which is funded as one of the EU’s Horizon Europe projects.