Directive reference – Art 4
A soil district is a territorial unit used to organise monitoring and assessment, defined by Member States on an administrative basis (Art 4(1)). A soil unit is the combination of a soil type and a land-use category and is the basic stratum for sampling and assessment (Art 4(2)). The soil type is taken from the BGR/JRC soil regions map of Europe at 1:5,000,000, and the land-use category follows Regulation (EU) 2018/841 (LULUCF), for example cropland, grassland or forest land (Art 4(2)). Member States may add additional stratification by climate zones, environmental zones or river basins to refine soil units (Art 4(2)).
Note:soil unit here is a monitoring stratum, not the same as a WRB reference soil group or a national soil-map unit.