Your soil quality is on your palm

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. Rather than scoring soil quality in absolute terms, the app scores the soil quality relative to the average soil quality within areas with similar soil and climatic conditions (so-called pedo-climatic zones). For example, 80% means that only 20% of the area of the selected pedo-climatic zone is considered to have a higher indicator value than the point location being assessed.

Depending on location as well as soil properties, SQAPP will give an overview of possible soil threats. These are scored based on general, scientifically-derived threshold values.

A summary shows the overall threat-level and indicates which soil parameters and soil threats should be addressed to reach a better soil quality. Recommendations are provided on how this can be achieved.

SQAPP was developed in the framework of the iSQAPER project, jointly funded by EU Horizon-2020, Government of China and Government of Switzerland, with ISRIC being a core partner for the development of the SQAPP.

SQAPP was launched during the plenary meeting of the iSQAPER project in Tartu, Estonia (12-15 June, 2018). The test version is freely available on Google Play Store and the Apple Appstore. So, take your chance and green your fingers, help us testing and improving the app.