The Climate Food and Farming Network (CLIFF) and the Global Research Alliance (GRA) awards 54 PhD fellowships for 2021 on the measurement and management of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon storage in agricultural systems. Two opportunities are available at ISRIC: #1  - 'Advances in global mapping of soil carbon sequestration potential and links with drought conditions' and, #32 - 'Improved soil carbon mapping in sub-Saharan Africa to support soil fertility and climate mitigation studies. 

New paper in Geoderma Regional on ‘Impressions of digital soil maps: The good, the not so good, and making them ever better’ by Dominique  Arrouays and others, including our colleague Laura Poggio. 

New paper in Earth System Data Science on ‘Standardised soil profile data to support global mapping and modelling’ by our colleagues Niels Batjes, Eloi Ribeiro and Ad van Oostrum (https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-299-2020).

New paper in Geoderma on ‘Model averaging for mapping topsoil organic carbon in France’ by Songchao Chen et al. with contributions from our colleagues Gerard Heuvelink and Laura Poggio.

With its partners, ISRIC is developing a Soil Fertility and Crop Nutrition Platform. The collaboration is aimed at developing and testing crop and site specific multi-nutrient fertiliser formulations at scale. Our colleagues Bas Kempen, Johan Leenaars and Rik van den Bosch are in Accra to discuss implementation for a new pilot area in Ghana. The new study will consider rainfed rice and maize in an area of over 20,000 km2 of cropland in the north, east and south of the country for which new soil maps will be created. The project will run for 2 to 3 years.

Our guest researcher, Dr David Rossiter, gave a lecture on “Providing consistent information on the world’s soils” at the Cornell Soil Science and Crop Sciences Seminar (23 Jan. 2020), detailing the breadth of ISRIC's activities.

Do you want to work with us on our mission to promote knowledge on soils for achieving the sustainable development goals (SDG)? ISRIC is looking for six new colleagues: Experienced Project Coordinator International (2x), Senior Specialist Sustainable Land Management, Digital Soil Mapping Specialist, Management Support Officer, and Specialist Community Management and External Communication.

The vacancies are closed February 15^th 2020. You can no longer apply.

We will be giving two Spring School courses soon (11-15 May, 2020). So far, 46 participants from different countries have registered; welcome! You can still register, but the available places are filling up rapidly.

More info on the courses:

Hands-on Digital Soil Mapping (DSM)  (maximum capacity has been reached, you can register in the waiting list

The Climate Food and Farming Network (CLIFF) and the Global Research Alliance (GRA) awarded 31 PhD fellowships for 2020 on the measurement and management of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon storage in agricultural systems to early-career scientist from fourteen developing countries. One of these positions, 'Mapping soil organic carbon change to support climate change mitigation', will be hosted by ISRIC. Awardee Maria Eliza Turek from Brazil will join us in 2020.

ISRIC - World Soil Information has been updating their soil property maps for the world (SoilGrids250m). Numerous improvements were implemented since publication of the `2017 version’, making this a completely new product. The first layers (spatial predictions) are available as a ‘sneak preview’ (see bottom text for details); the full version with supporting web viewer will be released around March 2020.