The Department of Environmental Quality and Soils results from the merger of the Departments of Soil Degradation and Conservation and Territorial Planning, approved at the Center Board on October 15, 2018 (structure pending approval and formalization in the Agreement).

Currently, its lines of research are focused on deepening the knowledge, evaluation and monitoring of the environmental quality of the territory, and of soils as a fundamental component of this, distributed in three axes. Axis 1: study of desertification processes in Mediterranean environments (mainly erosion, contamination, salinization, variations in carbon storage and soil biodiversity) through different factors, such as changes in land use, forest fires and climate change. Axis 2: environmental pollution, where current sources of environmental degradation and their possible future projection at different scales are studied, risk assessment is carried out, and new analytical methodologies are developed for the simultaneous detection of different pollutants, their metabolites and their footprint in aquatic systems (including biota). Axis 3: study of Mediterranean agroecological systems, the influence of soil management and crop biodiversity on the provision of ecosystem services to achieve sustainable agriculture.