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Towards a global soil information system
Recognizing the critical importance of soil observations to GEOSS, the global soil survey community is uniting to contribute to GEO. The European Commission, represented by ISRIC-World Soil Information (point of contact) and the EC’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), will facilitate the formation of this platform with the support of various institutions with national and international mandates.
The aim of this initiative is to use GEO for communicating the development of a web accessible, geo-referenced soil Information system (Task DA-09-03e). Several existing and on-going projects can contribute to the development of such a soil system. As a World Data Centre for Soils, ISRIC will, for instance, contribute to this soil task with its projects, datasets and products, including e-SOTER, SOTER, WISE, and GlobalSoilMap.net. Similarly, other institutions have committed to contribute to this process, which is open to participation by all soil institutions.
Climate change analyses
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Soil map of Mauritius |
Organisations involved in research at the global scale need accurate, geo-referenced soil information. A fine-resolution, global soil information system would enable climatologists, hydrologists, crop modellers, foresters and agricultural scientists, among others, to better predict the effects of global change.
In climate change analyses, for example, soil organic matter is taken into consideration only in a very generic manner. This does not do justice to the importance of soils as long-term natural reservoirs of soil organic carbon and their potential for mitigating climate change subject to adoption of sustainable land management practices. Estimates of food production and the need for external inputs, such as location-specific application of fertilizers, ought to be based on good soil data.
For example, marginal lands are increasingly being taken into cultivation. High production potentials are claimed for these lands, such as in current debates about biofuels.
However, unfavourable soil characteristics may severely depress yields ─ they may be too acid or saline, micro nutrients may be strongly fixed or simply not available. This may apply also to phosphorus, putting a large claim on scarce, natural P-sources. Likewise, high-quality soil information is important for addressing related issues like soil water conservation, maintenance of (soil) biodiversity, prevention and restoration of soil degradation, and reforestation.
High-resolution soil information
Within the last decade, we have witnessed remarkable progress in Earth observation techniques and prediction of soil properties from data generated by remote and on-the-ground sensors. At the same time, geo-statistical techniques have been developed that allow for predicting soil properties in areas with little or no information as well as for indicating the uncertainty of such predictions. Soil spectral analysis is becoming a robust and inexpensive tool for identifying soil functional attributes and developing high-resolution soil databases.
The development of high-resolution soil information for the whole world will take several years and is being undertaken in projects such as GlobalSoilMap.net. At the same time, existing global soil geographical data at a lower resolution could already make a major contribution to improving analyses of global change processes. The overall resolution can be improved over time by incorporating national and regional datasets. Various techniques are currently being developed and tested at various institutions, and a global coordination could generate much synergy in this process. Projects such as e-SOTER and GlobalSoilMap.net can serve as vehicles to this aim, as could be other initiatives.
More information about this sub-task will be made on a website that is still under construction.
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