ISRIC at the 2024 Global Symposium on Soil Information and Data

In September of this year, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), its Global Soil Partnership (GSP) and the Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISSCAS) co-organised a Global Symposium on Soil Information and Data (GSID24) in Nanjing, China.

The symposium saw the participation of 400 on-site and over 800 virtual attendees, including soil experts, policymakers, and stakeholders from around the world.

ISRIC- World Soil Information at GSID24

ISRIC’s vision ‘A world where reliable and relevant soil data, information and knowledge is freely available and properly used to address global environmental and societal challenges’ was highlighted by our experts at GSID24, as well as the work we do with our partners to maintain and develop new, internationally recognised standards, methods and tools for handling and interpreting soil data, and on strengthening national level soil information. Our experts also stressed the importance of adhering to FAIR principles, emphasising that data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. Applying FAIR principles not only ensures efficient data utilisation and informed decision-making but also has the potential to significantly impact global sustainability efforts.

Fenny van Egmond, ISRIC Soil Sensing and Soil Information Specialist, delivered a compelling keynote presentation on FAIR soil data in support of Sustainable Land Management (SLM) on behalf of the ISRIC team. She emphasised that while the application of FAIR principles leads to increased efficiency and innovation while saving costs, challenges such as lack of institutional support, technical limitations, and gaps in capacity building remain significant barriers to the implementation of a soil information system (SIS).

ISRIC's active participation in the symposium was marked by the insightful presentations of its experts:

• Fenny van Egmond, also presented on ‘Participatory soil, land, crop data catalog to facilitate informed decision-making based on open standards and open-source software’ and ’GloSIS soil data exchange model and ontology: current status and future developments’ and ‘Soil information initiatives at national level: a need for collaboration’.
• Laura Poggio, Senior Digital Soil Mapping and Remote Sensing Expert, presented on ‘Advances in DSM for global and continental applications: innovative covariates, model applicability and spatial uncertainty assessment’.
• Thaïsa van der Woude, Project Coordinator, presented on ‘Enabling environments for soil information systems (SIS) success: new evidence for improving sis intervention design’.

Moving forward

Working together across national borders and exchanging expertise with experts and institutes at local and national levels and beyond is essential to ensure the health and quality of our soils into the future. The GSP, hosted by FAO, offers a framework for achieving this goal at the UN level by leveraging the governmental structure of the UN. ISRIC supports the GSP by providing the (technical) expertise needed to establish high-quality and standardised soil information systems and products worldwide.

To help strengthen SIS development in Africa, a new partnership between FARA, ISRIC and CABI, with support from FAO, has been formed to develop an African Continent-Wide Support Team.