NYC Urban Soils Institute

05/08/2026

Need help finding Today's Free Soil Testing Event? Map below!

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About the event: Soil testing is happening today, Friday, May 8th, were in Brooklyn at the Pratt Dye Garden testing soil from 12 noon - 4 pm in collaboration with Sam Asher as part of the Soil First Aid testing event, so come through. Because this event includes educational workshops, the format will be a little different than usual - Testing will happen in batches from 12:00 - 12:30, then half an hour of group interpretation and discussion, followed by a project presentation from 1 - 2 pm, then more batch soil testing, interpretations/discussions in the same tempo until 4 pm.

About the project: Soil First Aid is an interdisciplinary soil testing project in Pratt’s Dye Garden, examining the existing conditions of the garden’s soils along the North wall and analyzing the impacts of three improvement techniques: compost, red clover cover crops, and biochar. Through the use of chemical soil testing and soil chromatography, Soil First Aid reveals the graduality of human-perceived change in a system dominated by microbes through quantitative analyses and visual chromatograms.

04/22/2026

For the Love of Soils - Happy Earth Day 2026!
Love the “soils” skin you’re in!
Soils are the skin of the earth. We need soils in order to be healthy!

Did you know?
That approximately 10,000 to 1 million microbes (not just bacteria- but fungi, viruses, arthropods too) exist per square centimeter on human skin..
That in one teaspoon of soil, there can be 100 million to billions of microbes..
That means Soils have 28 times greater mean effective species richness than our skin.

So…?
Skin coming in contact with this rich biodiversity of microbes in soils beneficially increases skin microbial diversity too.
These microorganisms are crucial for educating the human immune system and help maintain a healthy skin barrier, actually improving hygiene!
Also, minerals in soils like magnesium, zinc, and silica help skin elasticity, oil regulation, and cellular regeneration.
The soils microbiome helps protect the skin's barrier against pathogens and helps reduce inflammation responses like eczema and acne.

Get in the dirt and get happy!
Get to know . This microorganism can modulate our immune responses linked to improved stress management, making you happy!
Leave the dirt on your carrot?
The biodiversity of soils directly impacts the human gut microbiome, which is connected to mental well-being.

Urbanization has greatly reduced human contact with soils; Nature being replaced with sterilized environments. The exposure to soil dust and microbes early on in life has a profound effect on strengthening the human immune system. Check out Dr. Donata Vercelli’s paper (below) on this topic!

Pelotherapy and geotherapy has been a healing art effective for mind, body, and soul, dating back thousands of years to ancient civilizations and some keep up the traditions today. Mud baths, mud packing and wraps, clay therapy, Earthing. Check out some popular natural mud baths around the world, or make your own at home!

Worried about contaminants? Get your soils tested with us and get some one on one interpretation of your soils conditions.
Soils testing schedule:

Saturday, April 25th - Public Soils Testing in Newburgh, NY at Newburgh Urban Farm Fair

Sunday May 3rd- Snug Harbor Plant Sale Soil Testing on Staten Island ( at Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden - Google Maps)

Friday May 8th : Soil First Aid testing event at the Pratt Dye Garden in Brooklyn (Pratt Institute - Google Maps)

Saturday June 27th: Public Soils Testing on Governors Island at EARTH MATTER 12-4pm

Saturday July 18th: Public Soils Testing on Governors Island at EARTH MATTER 12-4pm

Saturday August 29th :Public Soils Testing on Governors Island at EARTH MATTER 12-4pm

Saturday SEPT 19th : Public Soils Testing on Governors Island at EARTH MATTER 12-4pm

Saturday October 24th: Public Soils Testing on Governors Island at EARTH MATTER 12-4pm

Read more:
Exploring Linkages Between Soil Health and Human Health: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39602560/
Short‐term direct contact with soil and plant materials leads to an immediate increase in diversity of skin microbiota: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29808965/
Skin exposure to soil microbiota elicits changes in cell-mediated immunity to pneumococcal vaccine: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-68235-8
It’s in the dirt! Bacteria in soil may make us happier, smarter: https://blog.nwf.org/2011/03/its-in-the-dirt-bacteria-in-soil-may-make-us-happier-smarter/
Getting dirty. It’s surprisingly good for your health: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/well/live/dirt-health-benefits.html
Immune development and environment: lessons from Amish and Hutterite children: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28843541/
Early childhood gut microbiome shapes immune defence: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/healthier-world/early-childhood-gut-microbiome-shapes-immune-defence
Soil Microorganisms Scientifically Proven to Benefit Mental Health: https://share.google/RUWWOdkm17GSRGAlY

04/17/2026

Exciting news for our Artist Residency for the 2026 season! We are returning to Governors Island in a bigger Swale House (Nolan Park 6b) along with ecoartspace. 🌞⚡️🔬⛴️
1, 2, or 3 week residencies are available to artists, musicians, writers, other creatives, and ecologists whose work intersects with soil. You can learn more and apply on our website. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Stay tuned for public events coming up 📢❤️🎉

04/16/2026

03/11/2026

Dang, missed the event but looking forward to this video being available for 30 days at

tinyurl.com/KimmererWellesley2026

(They note, Please allow for some processing time before the video is posted.)
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We are thrilled to offer a livestream of the in-person talk and Q&A: All Flourishing is Mutual: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World with Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer. The in-person event is sold out, but there is no registration required to attend the livestream. Go to wellesley.edu/live to view the talk on Sunday, March 8 at 5 pm.🌟

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer is the award-winning author of Braiding Sweetgrass and The Serviceberry, renowned plant ecologist, educator, writer, MacArthur Fellow and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.

In her talk, Dr. Kimmerer will present the serviceberry as a living metaphor for abundance, generosity, and reciprocity, offering a powerful alternative to extractive, market-based scarcity economies. She will reflect on human dependence on the living world and the disconnect created by Western consumer systems, inviting audiences to imagine legal, ethical, and spiritual frameworks grounded in ecological interdependence. Through an ethic of care, gratitude, and mutual responsibility, Kimmerer explores how we might re-orient our lives toward a gift economy rooted in relationship and the shared flourishing of all beings.

The video will be available after the event at tinyurl.com/KimmererWellesley2026 for 30 days if you can’t make that day. Please allow for some processing time before the video is posted.

02/02/2026

Eight years ago, 2018... great collaborative project with the Great Glenn Ross, Baltimore, MD

Check out his research and ongoing project, Toxic Tours of East Baltimore

“The Toxic Tour was created in 2007 to create awareness of urban environmental and related health issues in East Baltimore, and the causes thereof.

Within the triangle of Johns Hopkins East Baltimore Campus, Johns Hopkins Bayview and Johns Hopkins Homewood, we have the highest rate of health disparities in the whole city. We must break the disconnects between how the White and African-American communities think about environmental and health related issues.”

-Glenn Ross

[email protected]

Toxic Tour Map: https://tinyurl.com/28vj3f7a

Toxic Tour Video:
https://www.chesapeakebaymagazine.com/video-toxic-baltimore-tour-sheds-light-inspires-change/

More on the collaboration: https://www.margaretboozer.com/portfolio/toxic-tour/

01/14/2026

Who wants to learn some soil science?

Check out Jonathan Russell-Anelli’s super cool PLSCS 2600- Soil Science lectures from 2012 at Cornell University



This YouTube playlist of Russell-Anelli’s lectures is perfect for folks who didn’t take soil science in college or need to brush up on vocab and concepts. Each video is about 55 minutes, total of 39 lectures!!

(Especially love the one on Glacial Finger Lakes!)

🔗 to full playlist https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs7Y2nGwfz4HPoRAaB64c-MdF1kK-P-Wy&si=LkfEyWSabCAGu7fz

Also, one of our favorite soil scientist-artists is at … check out her awesome work, too!

01/09/2026

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In part two of a two-part series, Lynnette Widder visits three sites that illustrate the values, costs, and benefits shaping the flow of recycled soil in and around the city: Faztec Industries in Staten Island, the Clean Soil Bank in Brooklyn, and the Posillico Wash Plant on Long Island. Following along as these key urban resources seek new raisons d’etre, ’s photographs capture the material, often messy realities of soil shifting.

Read the full piece https://linktr.ee/urbanomnibus

01/09/2026

Soil Care for Challenging Circumstances

https://www.finegardening.com/article/soil-care-for-challenging-circumstances

Repost from


You can find the link to my webinar on the Fine Gardeing website!

https://www.finegardening.com/article/improving-and-preserving-soil-health-in-challenging-scenarios-qa-with-kisten-kurtz

Hosts: Carol Collins and Kirsten Kurtz

Date & Time: January 16, 2026, 9:00 a.m. EST

12/13/2025

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NEW CALL FOR PAPERS!

Clara and guest editors Seth Denizen, Jolein Bergers, Nadia Casabella, and Ananda Kohlbrenner are launching a call for papers for the thematic section “Architecture has a soil problem” of issue 13, to be published in 2027.

Architecture has a soil problem. Not only epistemologically—through the discipline’s limited frameworks to understand, analyze, or work with soil—but also ontologically, in the very way it conceives of soil in the first place. From the digging of foundations to the sealing of surfaces, architectural practice typically treats soil as ‘dirt’, an interchangeable substance devoid of specificity, meaning, or vitality. Soils are too often reduced to a passive background for human activity, an empty canvas to build upon rather than a living milieu to design with, within or through. This ignorance indirectly contributes to their depletion and demise. What would it mean to resist this thanatological path and instead reconceptualize both soil and architecture through their entanglements, in relation to the pedogenetic processes they co-produce?
Architecture has a soil problem or rather, several interrelated problems or predicaments that must be addressed. In this call for contributions, we invite submissions that may (A) deepen our understanding of these problems through scholarly or visual interventions, or (B) present case studies of built projects that suggest ways of confronting or transforming them.
Contributions may take the form of academic papers or visual essays, and can be written in English or French. Abstracts should be submitted by 30/01/2026 to clara.archi [at] ulb.be. Full CFP and exact modalities can be found on our website : https://clararevue.ulb.be

12/09/2025

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THANK YOU to Alex Toland and Patricia Watts for the presentation of their new awesome book SOILS TURN in our shop yesterday ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

THANK YOU also to Samuel Johnstone and Sofia Fernandez for their sensual soil performance, to The Hercules and Leo Case for the soil soundtrack, to Daniel Hengst for presenting peat plant cuddles, and masharu for the selection of edible clays from around the world (the greenish french one resonated most during the tasting)!

THANK YOU to all the guest who came!

Check out our website for the book, which was published by ecoartspace, with support from the Bauhaus-Universität Kreativfonds.








masharu

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