From 7-12 June 2026, Nanjing (China) hosted the 23rd World Congress of Soil Science (WCSS 2026), bringing together soil scientists from around the world to share recent advances in soil research.

Researchers from the Technical University of Cartagena (UPCT), partners in the SOILPROM project, presented a poster entitled “Quantifying Metal Transport by Water Erosion: A Field-Based Assessment in a Semiarid Mediterranean Former Mining Area (SE Spain)” within Session 305009: Soil Pollution by Heavy Metals and Risk Control.

The poster showcased the Spanish SOILPROM use case on water erosion, which investigates the transport of metals through storm-generated runoff in the mining district of Cartagena-La Unión (SE Spain). The work described the field monitoring approach used to quantify metal transport in both dissolved and sediment-bound forms and included results obtained between July 2025 and April 2026 from four monitored rainfall events that generated runoff and sediment transport. These observations provided the first field-based estimates of metal mobilization within the study catchment. The congress provided an opportunity to discuss the methodology and findings with researchers working on soil pollution, erosion processes, and land restoration, and to increase the visibility of SOILPROM among the international soil science community.