The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded the development of a Soil Intelligence System (SIS) for three states in India, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha, to support better decision-making in agriculture. The project will develop comprehensive soil information at scale and build accessible geospatial information systems, following FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) principles.

The European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) has funded soil data harmonisation within the Danube basin to support the Danube strategy. In 2020, the project will deliver a harmonised soil and terrain (SOTER) database, at 1:250,000 scale, which will support soil and land use policy development in the Danube basin.

We were saddened to learn of the passing of Prof. Dr Ir Klaas Jan Beek (25 August 1935 - 13 January 2019), long-time friend of ISRIC and esteemed Honorary Fellow since 2004. 

At ISRIC, Klaas Jan is particularly known for his seminal work on land evaluation and his trusteeship as Rector of the International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC, Enschede; 1980-2000). He will be truly missed. 

The Managing Board and staff of ISRIC wish to express their sincere sympathy to the family. 
 

The Climate Food and Farming Network (CLIFF) and the Global Research Alliance (GRA) awards record 33 fellowships for 2019 research on agricultural emissions and mitigation.

Two of these early-career scientists will be hosted by ISRIC - World Soil Information. Bertin Takoutsing from Cameroon will work on 'Accounting for errors in SOC estimates introduced by proximal sensing methods'. Yuri Gelsleichter from Brazil will work on 'Assessing the impact of land use change scenarios on soil organic carbon stocks'.

On November 30, 2018, the World Data System (WDS) of the International Science Council (ISC, formerly ICSU) has formally re-accredited ISRIC (WDC Soils) as a WDS Regular Member for a further three years.

As part of the re-accreditation process, we already obtained the CoreTrustSeal certification (xx July 2018), which defines 16 requirements for core-certified repositories.

Regular WDS members are nodes that deal directly with data curation and data analysis services.

In conjunction with World Soil Day (5 December), our colleague Dr Laura Poggio is attending the 3rd Global Soil Security Conference on ‘Soil Security and Planetary Health’ (Sydney, 4-6 December 2018). Laura will be speaking about our recent work on ‘facilitating land capability assessments through automation of the generation of land quality indicators’.

On 21st November 2018, Richard Gordon(CEO Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research) and Rik van den Bosch (Director ISRIC – World Soil Information) have signed a Framework Agreement.

As of November 10, 2018 ISRIC staff will temporarily be located at AGROTECHNION building. ISRIC working space at GAIA C-0 corridor will undergo substantial refurbishment.

Temporary address

Bomenweg 4 (1st Floor) / Building 309
6703 HD Wageningen

Upon their degradation, soils gradually lose their capacity to support ecosystem functions, many of which are related to the beneficial effects of soil organic matter (SOM). Depleted SOM stocks can be restored to some degree through judicious, sustainable land management. However, reported potentials for sequestration of carbon in soils of agricultural lands are overly optimistic because they assume that all degraded cropland and grassland can be subjected to best management practices. 

From 20 - 24 May 2019, ISRIC - World Soil Information will organise a Spring School on digital soil mapping, classification and assessment for soil and environmental scientists, students, soil experts and professionals in natural resources management.

For more information and registration please see: http://www.isric.org/utilise/capacity-building/springschool