We are pleased to inform you that we have a vacancy for a Database/IT expert at ISRIC - World Soil Information.

About the job

Within its regular programme, ISRIC- World Soil Information is updating the functionality of the World Soil Information Service (WoSIS), a large PostgreSQL database designed to provide the world community with quality-assessed, standardised soil data to support modelling at (sub)regional and global scales.

Tasks as Database Developer / IT expert

Landscape in Ethiopia. Photo credit: Rod Waddington

On November 2, several projects funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 “Sustainable Intensification in Africa” topic met to share information about their work and benefit from each other’s expertise.

The online education platform edX chose the course offered by the university of Leuven (KU Leuven) in collaboration with the ISRIC - World Soil Museum as one of ten finalists for their 2020 Prize for Exceptional Contributions in Online Teaching and Learning.

SoilGrids, a global soil properties maps, is now available to use via Google Earth Engine.

Last month, the WORLDSOILS project held its kickoff meeting. This project is an effort to monitor topsoil organic carbon content with a new approach. This work is funded by the European Space Agency (ESA).

The ESA WORLDSOILS project’s methods are based in Earth Observation (EO) technology with the main objectives of:

From 17 - 24 May 2021, ISRIC - World Soil Information will organise a Spring School on digital soil mapping, classification and assessment for soil and environmental scientists, students, soil experts an

A new guest researcher, Giulio Genova, joins ISRIC for five months in order to advance efforts applying deep learning to digital soil

This month, ISRIC led a four-day training for the Rwanda Agricultural Board (RAB) about the first steps needed to build a national soil information system.  

“The set of trainings provided by ISRIC will help Rwanda, through RAB, to keep soil and agronomy datasets well organized so they are easy to analyze and use,” said RAB Principal Research Fellow Vicky Ruganzu. Mr. Ruganzu attended the training and is looking forward to seeing Rwanda’s soil data aggregated and standardized. 

Early September, we welcomed CLIFF-GRADS awardee Maria Eliza Turek, a PhD candidate from the Federal University of Paraná, Brazil, as guest researcher.  Maria has a background in soil physics and environmental modelling and will mainly contribute to projects on ‘Mapping derived soil hydrological properties using machine learning’ and ‘Mapping soil organic carbon change to support climate change mitigation’.

Like other colleagues, Maria will be mainly working from her new 'home' in Wageningen in view of current COVID-related restrictions.

Today was the kick-off meeting for the Soil4Africa project. Funded by the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Union, Soils4Africa will put in place by 2024 an Open-data Soil Information System (SIS). The SIS will enable farmers, agri-businesses, scientists, and policymakers in their efforts towards sustainable intensification of agriculture and boosting food security; by improving the quality and availability of African soil data. ISRIC is leading the Soils4Africa consortium.

The Soils4Africa project aims to: