Soil is a non-renewable resource which must be protected because our activities depend on it. Currently, it is deteriorating at an accelerating pace.
Soil protection and quality management require a set of indicators that provide information on its deterioration and/or the restoration of its properties and functions.
In response to the lack of biological indicators (bioindicators) to describe soil quality, a national research program has been implemented by ADEME [the French Environment and Energy Management Agency]: the BIOindicateurs
Its main purposes are:
This website is mostly dedicated to the 2nd stage of the program, its development stage: BIOindicateurs II
- to develop methods for the measurement of soil biodiversity and functions,
- to use soil bioindicators for the monitoring of soil quality,
- and to identify relevant bioindicators for the assessment of ecological risks induced by soil contamination.
You will find here plenty of information, in particular: its unfolding, the methods in use, the studied bioindicators, as well as tools intended for soil managers.
Download the article
of presentation of the program, published in EGS (Volume 16, ¾, 2009 - pages 145 through 158): “The ADEME Soil quality bioindicators program: Towards the development and validation of biological indicators for soil protection” (in french only).