The first modelling meeting of Climate Smart WATer Management and Sustainable DEVelopment for Food and Agriculture in East Africa (WATDEV) project was successfully held in Wageningen, the Netherlands from 11-12 October 2022. The main goals were to select models to be used for simulating scenarios of best management practices (BMPs) and innovations in the project study areas and development of a toolbox. The workshop was organized by ISRIC – World Soil Information and chaired by Dr Jantiene Baartman.

The second Annual Project Meeting of the H2020 Soils4Africa project was held September 2022 in Djerba, Tunisia. The general meeting sessions were followed back-to-back with meetings of the soil survey campaign coordinators in the 5 regions of Africa and the Project Executive Team (PET). The main objectives of the meetings were to strengthen partnership and ownership, update the consortium about progress and project plans as well as deliberate and propose ways for addressing project issues.

ISRIC - World Soil Information released a dashboard that provides a quick insight into the present World Soil Information Service (WoSIS) holdings.

WoSIS is a compilation of cleansed and standardised soil profile data for the world that is free and open access. The latest dynamic version is available from the ISRIC Soil Data Hub.

A new open access paper from ISRIC – World Soil Information is now available: “Global mapping of volumetric water retention at 100, 330 and 15,000 cm suction using the WoSIS database” published in International Soil and Water Conservation Research.

The work presented in the paper developed point-based global maps with estimated uncertainty of the volumetric soil water retention (SWR) at 100, 330 and 15,000 cm suction using measured and estimated SWR data and compared them with similar available products from the literature.

At ISRIC – World Soil Information, the last two years have been unusual. Like everyone, we have experienced unprecedented changes in our working environment as we shifted to working from home during the coronavirus. At the same time, our staff has grown and we’ve taken on new and different types of projects. We’ve expanded our portfolio in the areas of global soil information provisioning, sustainable land management decision making and capacity building.

At the 2022 World Congress of Soil Science in Glasgow, Scotland (31 July  - 4 Aug), there are many places you will be able to find ISRIC – World Soil Information. Please stop by our exhibit booth any day of the conference, located in the exhibition hall (Hall 4), and look for ISRIC people on the scientific sessions schedule.

Browse below to see when and where ISRIC staff will make presentations at the conference. We hope to see you there!

ISRIC – World Soil Information is seeking experts who can assist with the soil sampling for 2 countries in Europe: Poland and Italy. This work is part of the Horizon 2020 InnoVar project, next-generation plant variety testing for improved cropping on European farmland. InnoVar is a cooperation between 21 partners led by the Agrifood and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) from Belfast.

In June 2022, a new release of the World Soil Information Service (WoSIS) is available from ISRIC – World Soil Information. WoSIS is a compilation of cleansed and standardised soil profile data for the world that is free and open access.

From May 9-20, 2022, the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) took place in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Nearly 7,000 participants attended the gathering included delegations from 196 countries.