A standard for designing the sampling programme, not for the test itself
EN ISO 23611-6:2026 complements the organism-specific methods in the series with rules for designing the whole soil invertebrate sampling programme.
- Earlier parts of the series describe how to sample a given group of organisms; Part 6 answers the earlier question — how many points, when, and in what layout.
- This is a rare case of a standard governing the planning of a study rather than its execution; for a laboratory it is a document useful when quoting and agreeing work with a client.
- A badly designed sampling programme spoils the result regardless of the quality of the determinations — which is why this part affects the credibility of the whole soil study.
- The document also helps in disputes about how representative a sample is: it gives the client and the contractor a common reference.