The nomination process for the Glinka World Soil Prize 2018 is open and organizations and individuals are invited to propose appropriate candidates. Supported by the Russian Federation, the Glinka Prize is awarded annually under the auspices of the Global Soil Partnership on World Soil Day, consisting of the Glinka Medal and an award of USD 15,000.

The award is for dynamic change-makers dedicated to solving one of our world’s most pressing environmental issue: Soil Degradation.

Nominations must be submitted by 30th September 2018

Thursday 6 september 2018, 16:00 - 18:00 (Aula, Wageningen)

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Dr Marcos Angelini has won the ‘Best Paper in Pedometrics 2017’ award for his work on the use of structural equation modelling for digital soil mapping (World Congress of Soil Science, Rio, (12-17 August 2018)).

A very nice and well-deserved recognition for the work Marcos did for his PhD in Wageningen, while a guest researcher at ISRIC - World Soil Information. 

The Climate Food and Farming Network (CLIFF) and the Global Research Alliance (GRA) invites PhD students from developing countries to apply for a CLIFF-GRADS scholarship for short-term scientific training and research stays on topics related to the measurement and management of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon storage in agricultural systems (PDF).

SQAPP (Soil Quality Mobile App), is an easy-to-use tool that brings global soil data into the decision-making sphere of land users and other interested end users. It returns available soil quality information for any location in the world, simply picked by the user from a world map. Soil properties for that specific location are then shown and possibilities are offered to assess these values and to adapt them if necessary.

ISRIC – World Soil Information, within in the framework of project led by CIAT (International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Nairobi), provided expertise for an assessment of soil organic carbon (SOC) stock baselines for the Otjozondjupa region in Namibia. This was done in support of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 15.3 the aims of which is to achieve global land degradation neutrality (LDN) by 2030. Different sampling densities and digital soil mapping methods were compared and evaluated in terms of complexity, cost, and map accuracy.

This week (28 May – 1 June, 2018)  ISRIC - World Soil Information organized the sixth edition of the ISRIC Spring School on 'Mapping, classification and assessment of soils'.

Sixty-four participants from 28 countries attended the course. Two thirds of the participants focussed on spatial predictions of soil properties and soil classes using digital soil mapping. The other participants followed lectures and practicals about soil classification and their assessment. 

ISRIC – World Soil Information, carried out a review of long-term experiments for Europe and China to assess effects of agricultural management practices on soil quality. This work was done in the framework of the EU-China funded project iSQAPER.

ISRIC’s most important work in relation to collaborative projects on “Food security”, “Sustainable land Management and Land degradation neutrality” and “Mitigation and adaptation to climate change” is summarised in our Highlights for 2016-2017. We have refined our medium-term strategy, which included redefining our mission statement and structuring our four work streams: soil standards and reference; soil information brokering; building an effective user community; and co-production of derived products. A key event in 2017 has been the celebration of our 50th Anniversary.

An international group led by researchers at the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) and ISRIC – World Soil Information have compiled a large geo-referenced database of mangrove soil carbon measurements and developed a global map of mangrove forest soil carbon at 30 m spatial resolution. The map can help nations seeking to include mangrove habitats in payment-for-ecosystem services projects and in designing effective mangrove conservation strategies. The map and model outputs are freely available from Harvard Dataverse.