STRUDEL: Soil STRUcture Degradation Evaluation for Environmental Legislation
The STRUDEL project aims to provide reference values for the protection of soil structure, as well as simple methods for measuring soil structure.
Soil structure quality is a fundamental basis of most soil functions, including food production, water purification, flood regulation, nutrient cycling, habitat for organisms and carbon sequestration. Although soil structure quality is crucial for soil functioning, its importance is often ignored. This is because soil structure is very difficult to investigate and assess and most of us are not trained how to evaluate it. For the same reasons, soil structure protection is difficult to implement.
The STRUDEL project aims to provide reference values for the protection of soil structure, as well as simple methods for measuring soil structure requiring very little yet easily available equipment. Reference values for soil structure quality are to be included in the next release of the Ordinance on Impacts on the Soil (OIS). The methods are especially useful for cantonal soil protection services in the diagnosis of compaction, where soil structure parameters must be determined precisely, and as threshold values for interpreting these parameters.