fringe events
The wide-reaching scope of WCSS offered a unique opportunity for organisations and individuals to reach influencers and decision makers in the industry, cultivate opportunities, and promote public engagement with soil science. We also used the sessions to showcase popular perspectives of soil, including the Kiss the Ground documentary featuring Woody Harrelson.
World Congress of Soil Science
Restoring life in Earth
Global Soil Health
These meetings were set of directed conversations focused on reaching a consensus on how to deliver global-scale soil health by 2030. It aimed to connect farmers, science, corporates, NGOs, and policy to build a worldwide living laboratory through a creative common. This was a call to action.
World Congress of Soil Science
reaching higher grounds
the next generation of soil science through collaborative postgraduate training and learning
STARS Centre for Doctoral Training
This session explored the transformative benefits of collaborative postgraduate training for doctoral soil researchers. It aimed to celebrate ground-breaking soil science research undertaken by UK-based PhD students from the Soils Training and Research Studentship (STARS) Centre of Doctoral Training (CDT), funded by the UK government (2014 to 2022). As well as to highlight some of the programme’s research outputs, and convene an interactive discussion focused on the unique training experience delivered through the CDT. It was concluded by outlining how the CDT model may help propagate the next generation of soil experts, and the potential for building a legacy upon this.
World Congress of Soil Science
Soil Benchmark
Building Bridges between Soil Scientists and farmers: making best use of on farm soil data
How can soil scientists work more closely with farmers?
Farmers collect huge amounts of data on their soils. But it’s usually never shared off-farm. This event aimed to explore the potential of better use and sharing of this data to help both farmers and soil scientists.
World Congress of Soil Science
Ecological Continuity Trust (ECT)
Long-term Ecological Field Experiments – Opportunities for Soil Scientists
This main event aimed to ‘showcase’ the UK’s long-term ecological experiments (LTEs) resource to the soil science community with a view to building closer links and collaborations between researchers working above and belowground. The morning session presented five LTE case studies from ecologists, and the afternoon session explored with policymakers how LTE science and an understanding of soil health can help to preserve vital ecosystem services such as flood prevention, climate change mitigation and food security. The event concluded with a chaired Q&A panel session involving all the day’s speakers.
The event was complemented by a trip to the Whim Bog long-term experiment site the following day.
Read more about the Whim Bog experiment
