ISO/TS 18721:2026

Ecological soil functions — Characteristics, indicators and methods

Scope

This document provides a generic description of the methods available for measuring soil characteristics and indicators of core ecological soil functions. No distinction of context is made, i.e. no differentiation of land use and management (e.g agricultural, forest, urban, natural or contaminated lands). For each ecological soil function, the document specifically lists biotic and abiotic characteristics that can be measured. It focuses on characteristics and indicators that are either available as ISO documents or published in peer-reviewed papers.
This document applies to ecological soil functions and is not applied to soil functions such as geotechnical functions (foundation support for buildings, tunnels, etc.) or geothermal functions. Indeed, ecosystem services do not address soils without a topsoil, or with a covered topsoil (buildings, infrastructure, greenhouse farming, solar panel parks).
Methods and indicators for ecological soil functions can help in the assessment of soil-related ecosystem services but the overall assessment of ecosystem services is not covered in this document.
Other methods based on proxy indicators (e.g. soil occupation, hydrography parameters) can also be used for land planning at large scale. These indicators are not included in this document.