ESA is committed to monitor soils, the weathering upper surface layer of the Earth, with its key role for terrestrial life functions: plant growth, gas exchange with the atmosphere, retention of water and nutrients; in short, the habitat for organisms, a key component of terrestrial ecosystems and the source to food and timber. In July 2019 ESA hosted the World Soils User Consultation Meeting, followed in June 2021 by the User Requirements Consolidation Workshop, in the context of the WORLDSOILS project.

In the meanwhile, the EU has launched its Soil Mission, bringing to the forefront the role soils must play in the Green Deal, i.e., 75 % of soils should be healthy in 2030, and the Paris Agreement through The International “4 per 1000” Initiative, stating that agriculture, and in particular agricultural soils, can play a crucial role in food security and climate change.

The EU soil regulatory framework has been consolidated over the past four years, culminating on July 5^th 2023, with the proposal for a Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience (Soil Monitoring Law), which recalls the usability of Copernicus data for achieving the objectives. Now, corresponds to the Earth Observation scientific community to concretise the ways EO can serve to monitor the requirements of the various soil health indicators stated in the law.

SOC is a dynamic soil property reacting to past and current land use and management procedures. The rapidly evolving capacities of orbital sensors, with unprecedent high spectral, spatial and temporal resolutions over continental areas, are an essential component for monitoring the SOC seamlessly in the context of the EU Soil monitoring Law. Moreover, SOC satellite monitoring and mapping will be one of the building blocks for a trustworthy and cost-effective reporting and verification (MRV) for carbon capture and removal. 

You can choose one or both hackathons to participate:

Topic #1: Predicting Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) Density (kg/m^3)

SOC is one of the key indicators of soil health and one of the three key monitoring indicators of the UNCCD’s Land Degradation Neutrality initiative. Join this hackathon and help develop innovative solutions for predicting SOC density at site, farm and global scales. Help ESA and researchers around the world to produce the most accurate SOC monitoring systems.

Topic #2: Predicting Soil Erosion Categories

Combating soil erosion, compaction, pollution, salinization, and loss of soil biodiversity are among the most important objectives considering the soil conservation and UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Help ESA to develop applicable solutions that employ open EO data, generated and distributed by ESA and other leading Space Agencies, and that can be used to increase accuracy of soil degradation estimates. Help protect this valuable resource for our and future generations.

The hackathon winners will be awarded the opportunity to show their results at ESA’s Symposium on Earth Observation for Soil Protection and Restoration, taking place in Frascati, Italy from March 6–7, 2024. Moreover, the winning teams of each topic will receive:

1. €15k voucher for cloud processing at ESA’s NoR,
2. A life-long Enhanced Membership for the Open Access PeerJ journals,
3. 15 minutes to present their method at the Symposium,

The second and third placed teams will receive €12.5k, and €10k vouchers, respectively, at ESA’s NoR.

Maximum number of participants in the participating team allowed is: 2. The winning team will be required to provide a reproducible demonstration of how the winning solution was achieved (we recommend computational notebooks such as R markdown or Python notebooks).

Hackathon’s timeline:

Start: 2nd of February, 2024

Close: 16th of February 23:59 CET, 2024

Winners announced: 7th March 2024 at the closing session of the Symposium.

Hackathon Winners

We are excited to announce the Hackathon Winners, Ayomide Oraegbu (#1 Predicting SOC Density) and Joshua Sundance Bailey (#2 Predicting Erosion Categories), who had the opportunity to present their solutions at the symposium! 

Read more about the challenge and their winning solutions here.