GlobalSoilMap.net is a new global project that aims to make a new digital soil map. Alex McBratney from the University of Sydney in Australia enthuses about the new map, “The global digital soil map will use advances in technologies including remote sensing, data mining and spatial databases, and our improved scientific understanding of soil, for accurate prediction and sampling of soil properties. The new maps will replace the beautiful coloured paper soil maps developed in the last century which depicted soil types and which were largely qualitative and somewhat fixed depictions of soil distribution. Digital soil maps, with their infinity of shades and colours and ways of presentation are essentially spatial information systems of soil properties key to the soil’s sustainable productivity and ecosystem function. Digital soil maps are quantitative and dynamic and are in tune with the needs of scientists, policy makers and government officials. In a sense their use is only limited by the imagination of potential users. It is truly thrilling to be part of such a global enterprise.”

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Work has started in sub-Saharan Africa, through an $18 million grant awarded to the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to create the Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS). “The best science and technology available must be deployed immediately if Africa’s soils are to be managed in a sustainable manner. Let there be no mistake about the significance of this wonderful project,” said Kofi Annan, chairman of AGRA and former UN Secretary-General, in a recent statement. “This initiative will provide farmers, policy makers, and scientists crucial information on how to address declining soil fertility in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa,” explains Pedro Sanchez, director of AfSIS. “Soil mapping can help with that because it is one of the pillars to the challenge of sustainable development,” according to Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University (USA) and special advisor to the UN Secretary-General. The map will have many uses in different parts of the world.

Neil McKenzie, the Chief of Land and Water of CSIRO in Australia states that: “In Oceania, reliable soil information is needed to assess and improve the efficiency of rain-fed and irrigated agriculture. The challenge of food security and human nutrition is a major issue and there is an urgent need to minimise exploitative land uses and soil degradation (especially through erosion and acidification). The region is very vulnerable to climate change and soil information is essential for planning major shifts in land-use, for example, in southern Australia where water scarcity is already a problem. As with other parts of the world, the best soils for biosequestration of carbon have to be located.”

The GlobalSoilMap.net project will foster collaboration between institutions in Canada, Mexico and the USA to produce soil property data that is transnational in nature, according to Jon Hempel, Co-Director-National Geospatial Development Center of the National Resource Conservation Service in the USA. Jon Hempel: “Legacy and heritage soil survey data holdings across North America that have been produced at different scales and under different taxonomic systems will be harmonized into a common, consistent and geographically contiguous dataset of soil properties. It will allow scientists and officials to more easily make application of the data for many interpretive uses across the North American continent.”

The GlobalSoilMap.net consortium, which is led by ISRIC - World Soil Information (Wageningen, Netherlands), includes the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (Ispra, Italy), CSIRO (Canberra, Australia), the University of Sydney (Sydney, Australia), Institute of Soil Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Nanjing, China), the Earth Institute at Columbia University (New York, USA), the US Department of Agriculture - Natural Resources Conservation Service (Morgantown, USA), IRD (Montpellier, France), the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa, Rio de Janeiro) and CIAT-TSBF (Nairobi, Kenya).

For more information please contact:

General coordination
Alfred Hartemink
ISRIC - World Soil Information
PO Box 353, 6700 AJ
Wageningen The Netherlands
alfred.hartemink@wur.nl

Alex McBratney
Faculty of Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources
The University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia
Alex.McBratney@usyd.edu.au

North America
Jon Hempel
NRCS National Geospatial Development Center
157 Clark Hall Annex, P.O. Box 6301 Morgantown, WV 26505 USA
jon.hempel@wv.usda.gov

South America
Maria de Lourdes Mendonça Santos
Embrapa, National Center of Soil Research -
Embrapa Solos Rua Jardim Botânico, 1024, CEP 22.460-000
Rio de Janeiro Brazil loumendonca@cnps.embrapa.br

Oceania
Neil McKenzie
CSIRO Land & Water
GPO Box 1666, Canberra, ACT, 2601 Australia
neil.mckenzie@csiro.au

Africa
Pedro Sanchez / N. Sanginga
Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute (CIAT-TSBF)
ICRAF Complex, UN Avenue, Gigiri, Nairobi P.O. Box 30677-00100
Nairobi, Kenya sanchez@iri.columbia.edu n.sanginga@cgiar.org

Asia
Gan-Lin Zhang
Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences
71 Beijingdonglu, Nanjing 210008 China
glzhang@issas.ac.cn

Europe
Luca Montanarella / Florence Carre
European Commission - DG JRC
Via E. Fermi, 2749 I-21027 Ispra (VA) Italy
luca.montanarella@jrc.it
florence.carre@jrc.it