File:Dutch Agriculture, Netherlands.jpg

English: On 4 December 2020, the European Union Soil Observatory (EUSO) has been officially launched. Over the next two years it will become a dynamic and inclusive platform and support policymaking by providing new knowledge and data, not only for the scientific community but also for the soil user community and the European Commission services. Soils play a key role in regulating the Earth’s climate, but they are being degraded by unsustainable land use, together with growing population pressure, changes in consumption patterns and increasingly by extreme weather events. Their monitoring can become a key factor in the Green Deal for Europe. For these reasons, sustainable soil management is one of the main objectives of the EUSO, that will grow its content over the coming months. This true colour image that has been acquired by one of the two satellites of the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission. It shows the two opposite sides of Noordoostpolder and Eastern Flevopolder, in the Dutch province of Flevoland, that are connected by the Ketelbrug bridge. Flevoland is located in the centre of Netherlands and is the main agricultural production region in the country, which is the third largest agricultural exporter in the world. The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission is composed of two twin satellites, Sentinel2-A and Sentinel-2B and provides multispectral data with 13 different spectral bands and a maximum spatial resolution of 10 metres. With its global coverage and 5 days revisit frequency, it allows the development of new applications for regional to global agriculture monitoring.