Soil animal experts from NIOO, Wageningen UR and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam put together a chart that helps people to identify the creatures at home .
Together with the Centre for Soil Ecology, the Dutch Institute for Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) organized this special day. Because 2015 is the International Year of Soils, it was chosen to put soil creatures in the centre of attention. Everyone was invited to search in their garden or on their balcony and to submit their discoveries on www.bodemdierendag.nl
This information is used to see how the soil life in the Dutch cities and villages are doing. According to the initiators a few thousand people throughout the Netherlands participated. Also a few schools used this theme in their lessons. Until now the organization received around 300 individual and mainly group submissions. The woodlouse was encountered most often, but only 20 moles were encountered. The VARA radio programme ‘Vroege Vogels’ had a live stream about the search.
On Sunday the 11th of October ‘Vroege Vogels’ will reveal the endresults between 7.00 – and 10.00 on NPO Radio 1. On the website www.bodemdierendag.nl you can already see the submissions per region and also the end results will be published here on Sunday.