Raising awareness for soil biodiversity and multiplying monitors by student-based Citizen Science

SoilRise aims to extent expertise and knowledge on soil biota in academic and public networks as a basis of utilisation of citizen science in monitoring duties below ground. Biodiversity monitoring is mostly limited by missing expertise, money and time. Belowground biota is even harder to describe, count, or characterize due to its cryptic mode of life. However, soil biota is crucial for the functioning of all terrestrial ecosystems including land use systems. Sustainable land use relays on ecosystem service provisioning of soil biota. Hence, monitoring is of great importance. SoilRise will create a system of teachers training to multiply knowledge and expertise among gardeners and farmers which will be enabled to monitor parts of soil biota to a certain level of taxonomy, activity, or functional diversity. SoilRise will start and exemplify this for earthworm communities in farmland (arable or grassland) and urban gardens and greens. Finally addressing networks of urban gardeners and farmers associations, SoilRise will develop a multiplication of expertise by implementing earthworm monitoring practises into teaching at universities and even farm schools. Students then go to their home rural communities (farmer associations) or stage citizen science events in urban gardens related to gardener networks. In the long run, well educated citizen can provide earthworm monitoring data of high value complementing biodiversity monitoring in the cultural landscape of Europe