A Soil Route Map for Scotland

Healthy, resilient soils are vital for productivity as well as supporting wider nature-based systems and ecosystem services. However, there are many risks threatening the future security of Scottish soils (e.g. erosion, compaction, contamination etc), which are often amplified by the impacts of climate change.

Currently, there is no single overarching soil policy providing direction or governance for Scottish soils. Therefore, Scottish Government recently commissioned a project through ClimateXChange to review and consolidate the challenges of managing soil systems and to develop an overarching strategy (Soil Route Map for Scotland) for delivering improved soil security across Scottish landscapes.

The soil route map recommends six objectives for Scotland (Figure 1) to achieve the vision of ‘thriving soils for Scotland’s communities, economy and environment’ and outlines initial suggestions and opportunities for implementing future activities, which will be explored further in phase 2 of the project (due for completion February 2026).