The Climate Food and Farming Network (CLIFF) and the Global Research Alliance (GRA) awards record 33 fellowships for 2019 research on agricultural emissions and mitigation.

Two of these early-career scientists will be hosted by ISRIC - World Soil Information. Bertin Takoutsing from Cameroon will work on 'Accounting for errors in SOC estimates introduced by proximal sensing methods'. Yuri Gelsleichter from Brazil will work on 'Assessing the impact of land use change scenarios on soil organic carbon stocks'.

On November 30, 2018, the World Data System (WDS) of the International Science Council (ISC, formerly ICSU) has formally re-accredited ISRIC (WDC Soils) as a WDS Regular Member for a further three years.

As part of the re-accreditation process, we already obtained the CoreTrustSeal certification (24 July 2018), which defines 16 requirements for core-certified repositories.

Regular WDS members are nodes that deal directly with data curation and data analysis services.

In conjunction with World Soil Day (5 December), our colleague Dr Laura Poggio is attending the 3rd Global Soil Security Conference on ‘Soil Security and Planetary Health’ (Sydney, 4-6 December 2018). Laura will be speaking about our recent work on ‘facilitating land capability assessments through automation of the generation of land quality indicators’.

On 21st November 2018, Richard Gordon(CEO Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research) and Rik van den Bosch (Director ISRIC – World Soil Information) have signed a Framework Agreement.

Upon their degradation, soils gradually lose their capacity to support ecosystem functions, many of which are related to the beneficial effects of soil organic matter (SOM). Depleted SOM stocks can be restored to some degree through judicious, sustainable land management. However, reported potentials for sequestration of carbon in soils of agricultural lands are overly optimistic because they assume that all degraded cropland and grassland can be subjected to best management practices. 

ISRIC WDC-Soils, regular member of the ICSU-World Data System, aims to serve the user with a selection of standardised soil data through WoSIS (World Soil Information Service). The development of this service has been made possible thanks to the contributions and shared knowledge of a steadily growing number of data providers and experts. We gratefully acknowledge their contributions!

The CIRCASA  team would like to invite you to fill in this questionnaire. The overall objective of the EU H2020 CIRCASA project is to strengthen synergies among researchers and promote the transfer of knowledge on carbon sequestration in agricultural soils.

ISRIC – World Soil Information has played an important role in developing the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB) since its inception in 1994. This role was greatly reduced after the retirement of our former colleague Dr Otto Spaargaren† in 2009.

We are pleased to announce that Stephan Mantel has been elected Vice-Chair of the IUSS WRB Working Group during the recent World Congress of Soil Science in Rio de Janeiro. Thereby, ISRIC will resume its historic role in further developing WRB.

Countries require up to date soil organic carbon (SOC) inventories to support carbon monitoring for REDD+ under the UNCCD as well as reporting on greenhouse gas emissions under the UNFCCC.

ISRIC produced soil organic carbon maps for Tanzania in collaboration with Tanzania Forest Services, Sokoine University of Agriculture, the African Soil Information Service (AfSIS) and the FAO.

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