Overview of the state of soil information worldwide Freddy Nachtergaele (FAO-AGLL) Rome IGOL September 2004. - презентация

1 Overview of the state of soil information worldwide Freddy Nachtergaele (FAO-AGLL) Rome IGOL September 2004

2 Problems related to global soil inventories Nations are not easily convinced of their interest to contribute to global soil inventory efforts. International mandates to harmonize clash with national priorities (scale issues). Soil/land is a national property, trans-national implications are difficult to grasp. Funding for soil inventories is difficult to obtain. Harmonization of analytical methods, mapping methods and classifying soils has been difficult to achieve although great progress was made over the last 5 years. Soil information is often protected by copyright and distribution rights. Soil information in classical form (maps/soil profiles/parameters measured ) is not geared to provide a good base for monitoring purposes, because most of the information is gathered over time (40 year period) and different quality of information is mixed in the same map/database.

3 The FAO - UNESCO SOIL Map of the World At scale 1:5 million it is still 25 years after completion the only appropriate source of global soil information. Important Dates in the Development of the Soil Map of the World 1960ISSS recommends the preparation of the soil maps of continents 1961FAO and UNESCO start the Soil Map of the World project. 1971Publication of the first sheet of the paper map (South America)

4 1981Publication of the last sheet of the paper map (Europe) 1984 ESRI digitizes the map and other information in vector format 1989 Zöbler produces a 1 º x 1 º raster version

5 1991FAO produces an Arc/Info vector map including country boundaries 1993ISRIC produces a 30' x 30' raster version under the WISE project. 1995ISRIC produces a 30' x 30' raster version with derived soil properties

6 1995FAO produces a CD ROM with a global vector map and derived soil properties with a 5 x 5 resolution as raster. 1998FAO-UNESCO re-issues the digital version with derived soil properties More information on this product is available at

7

8 Geographical distribution of Soil profiles by continent

9

10 Application Stocks of organic carbon in the soil (SOC) in South America.

11 The EU Soil Directive Monitoring soil parameters in Europe is hampered by the presence of lobby groups ranging from industry to extreme environmental action groups making compromises difficult; the effect of different national interests and economic concerns; the absence of agreement on a sampling scheme (grid versus stratified sampling) the fact that one focuses solely on soil degradation and monitoring and not on the wider issue of land degradation. For instance, about 30 soil indicators are presently proposed while only one concerns land use and management. Socio-economic driving forces and impacts are not evaluated at all; The focus is narrowly on soil carbon, soil erosion and soil contamination. Other issues are only indirectly tackled (biodiversity, soil sealing, salinization and landslides/flooding). The whole process suffers further from the fact that no baseline indicator information exists for monitoring except in the UK, Denmark and France. The soil map of Europe can only help to extrapolate data, it is not a baseline in itself.

12 Conclusions The FAO soil map of the world remains the only harmonized global dataset on soils ISRICs WISE-2 soil profile database is the most comprehensive one containing nearly soil profiles, most of them georeferenced. Soil Maps, SOTER databases and WISE soil profile databases cannot be used as Base line Information but they are extremely useful for extrapolation of results when stratified sampling schemes are proposed. Soil monitoring where undertaken is a slow and expensive process. Little agreement exist to-date on which parameters to sample as a priority and under which sampling scheme. The TEMS scheme is one example but is not systematic nor universal.

13 THANK YOU