The scientific strategy of LSE aims to answer the issues raised by the major anthropogenic pressures on soils, leading to their increasing artificialization. Are concerned, major environmental issues such as the preservation of biodiversity, the supply of biomass, or even the restoration of the quality of environments often degraded by (multi) contamination. The result is the necessary development of soil sciences in highly anthropized environments - methods and tools for the diagnostic of soil quality based on knowledge of their functioning and their evolution - and of an agronomy of highly anthropized environments - optimization of culture based on a better knowledge of the interactions between soils, plants and organisms (microflora and soil fauna). The applied part of the research carried out by LSE calls for the development of treatment processes for highly anthropized environments. These processes depend from both geosciences applied to the environment (soil engineering - soil construction) and agronomic engineering (plant engineering - phytomanagement, agromining, urban agriculture). The activities of LSE also contribute to the development of tools for taking soil into account in land planning strategies, the objective being to have functional soils able to provide ecosystem services.

As of January 1, 2020, LSE had approximately 60 collaborators. The research unit is located on two sites at Université de Lorraine, at the Graduate School of Agronomy and Food Industries (Ensaia) in Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy and at the IUT of Thionville-Yutz. The research unit is part of the AgroEcoSystem Division of the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) and depends on the INRAE Grand-Est Center. LSE is a member of the (OSU) OTELo - Observatory of Earth and Environment of Lorraine at Université de Lorraine. It is part of the Ressources21 Excellence Laboratory and is part of the Lorraine University of Excellence (LUE) project. It is also a partner of the ICÉEL Carnot Institute. LSE is the founder of the Groupement d’Intérêt Scientifique sur les Friches Industrielles (GISFI). At international level, LSE forms since 2016 the Ecoland International Joined Lab with the Key Lab Environmental Pollution Control and Remediation Technology of Sun Yat sen University (SYSU, Canton, China). Proof of its openness to the socio-economic world, the unit has given rise to the creation of three startups: MicroHumus (2007), Econick (2015) and Sol & co (2019).