_{President of Moldova Maia Sandu visiting the World Soil Museum. Photo credit: Guy Ackermans}

On Tuesday 5 September the ISRIC World Soil Museum was honored to host a very special guest: President of Moldova Maia Sandu. President Sandu visited the museum as part of her visit to Wageningen University & Research (WUR) to explore collaboration on agriculture, food security and climate change.

Next week, Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and ISRIC – World Soil Information are hosting the 2023 Wageningen Soil Conference. From Monday, August 28 – Friday, September 1, the conference takes place on WUR campus and is grouped around four topics: Soil for Society, Advances in Measuring and Modelling Soil Processes, Mapping and Evaluating Soil Functions across Scales, and Soil for Nature-Based Solutions.

You can find ISRIC – World Soil Information staff on the 2023 Wageningen Soil Conference programme at the following times:

Thursday, August 31

_{ISRIC Guest Researcher David G. Rossiter presenting at the 4th Global Soil Security Conference. Credit: Global Soil Security Conference 2023}

In June 2023, the 4th Global Soil Security Conference convened in Seoul, South Korea with more than 400 participants from more than 30 countries. Two representatives from ISRIC – World Soil Information presented at the conference:

ORCaSa partners organised a webinar dedicated to MRV (Monitoring, Reporting & Verification) systems for soil organic carbon (5 July 2023). The aim was to present the MRV system and the approaches and methodologies applied today. The webinar was attended by nearly 70 online participants from all over the world. 

The H2020 Soils4Africa project coordinated by ISRIC participated at the 5th AU–EU Agriculture Ministerial Conference in Rome on 30th June to present recommendations and

_{Figure 1: Annual field workshops are organized for testing and further development of the WRB system (image: WRB working group in Romania, 2018).}

The  World Reference Base for soil resources (WRB) Working Group has launched a new website: https://wrb.isric.org/

Land Soil Crop Hubs partners gathered in the World Soil Museum in Wageningen, The Netherlands, to share ideas for the next steps and reflect on the project process.

For the Horizon 2020-funded “Holistic management practices, modelling and monitoring for European forest soils,” (HoliSoils) project, ISRIC – World Soil Information recently published an explainer blog on the topic of how harmonised datasets of forest soil properties can support mapping and modelling in Europe.

On 31 May 2023, ISRIC – World Soil Information hosted a first meeting of a new community of practice for national-level soil information producers across Africa. The focus of the meeting was sharing results from a community survey, filled out by more than 120 soil information producers across Africa, about what professional development gaps this type of program could fill.

_{Ashenafi Ali A. (third from right) supervising fieldwork in Libo Kemikem wereda, South Gondar, Ethiopia with colleagues from ISRIC, Ministry of Agriculture, and BENEFIT-REALISE soil surveyors in 2020.}