1st European Summer School on Soil Survey 21-25 July 2003 Luca Montanarella EUROPEAN COMMISSION JOINT RESEARCH CENTRE Institute for Environment and Sustainability

What is the Joint Research Centre? The JRC is one of the twenty-four Directorate Generals of the European Commission European Commission 20 Commissioners DG DG DG CCR RECHERCHE BUDGET AGRICULTURE DG Mr Philippe Busquin European Commissioner for Research DG RESEARCH DG JRC ……… DG ENVIRONMENT and TWENTY OTHER DGs

Organisational Chart

Institutional Actions

Enlargement Activities 2003 Actions 20 new non-Statutory positions (almost all IES Actions) Burnt Area Mapping Analysis of Urban and Regional Development Greenhouse Gases Emissions from Eastern European agriculture Indicators for Sustainable Management of Waste The PEOPLE Project By end June 2003, IES had received around 100 applications from 2003 Call for Applicants. 20 Workshops and Advanced Training Courses Improvement of Emission Inventories Water Quality /Eutrophication in the Black and Baltic Seas European Summer School on Soil Survey ESDI 350 participants from Enlargement States

Towards a Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection Bruxelles, le 16.4.2002 COM(2002) 179 final COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS Towards a Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/agriculture/soil_protection.htm

Streamlining the flow of policy relevant soil information in Europe Georeferenced Soil Database for Europe EU Soil Monitoring (ICP Forest+LUCAS,etc.) Reporting policy relevant soil data aggregated by administrative units Ideally such a streamlined European system of soil data should facilitate the transfer of information from both the National and the European soil monitoring programmes to an harmonised georeferenced soil database. Information should be aggregated in meaningful spatial units (Soilscapes) therefore post-stratifying the data according to soil types. Reporting of policy relevant soil information should be done by deriving information out of the Georeferenced soil database for Europe and aggregating the information per administrative units, for example EUROSTAT’s NUTS3 level. As an example, the preliminary results of some of our soil erosion risk assessment activities is reported, showing soil erosion risk in five classes aggregated by NUTS3 administrative units. Thank you very much for your attention, National Soil Monitoring National Soil Surveys Soil Mapping Unit (Soilscape) Normalised Statistical Unit ACCESS HARMONISATION REPORTING

A common soil information system for an enlarged European Union

European Soil Information System Soil data EUROPEAN SOIL BUREAU NETWORK

CD ROM of the European Soil Database

Planned extension of the European Soil Database

The European Soil Database is a database, not a map The European Soil Database is a database, not a map. It consists in a relational database defining a geometric data set of Soil Mapping Units (SMU), which represent the actual mapping unit delineated at a scale of 1:1,000,000. Such a relatively small scale can not represent the actual diversity of soil types. Consequently each SMU is a compound unit representing a spatial entity grouping together several soil types. These Soil Typological Units (STU) are organised within each SMU and can be representing variable proportions of the total surface of the SMU. This representativity within each SMU is reported in the table STU.ORG containing the STU’s distribution in each SMU. The relevant soil attributes (physical and chemical properties) are attached to each STU. This allows to extract out of such a system, with the aid of an appropriate GIS software, thematic maps for each of the attributes of the STU’s.

FAO EU Member States Regions Communes From the Global to the Local Scale EUSIS - A nested soil information system for Europe Different scales give answers to different questions Global assessments World Soil and Terrain Database 1 : 5,000,000 FAO Soil Geographical Database of Europe 1 : 1,000,000 EU 1 : 250,000 Georeferenced Soil Database of Europe Member States Catchment Information System 1 : 50,000 Regions First of all there is a scale issue. Data currently available for all of the European Union are at 1:1,000,000 scale, which may be a scale sufficient for pan-European assessments, but can not be a scale useful for actual policy implementation at National, Regional and Local scale. There we need to build more detailed databases containing information at a more precise scale. The European Soil Information System aims indeed towards the construction of a nested system of soil information allowing for a coherent scale transfer between the European and the more detailed scales at National level. Indeed, during the past years we have on one side tried to improve the information at 1:1,000,000 scale for Europe while providing the necessary technical and scientific framework (guidelines) for the development of more detailed soil databases coherent with the 1:1,000,000 scale information layer. These guidelines are available in the form of a Manual of Procedures titled “Georeferenced Soil Database for Europe” published by the European Communities and available in several languages. Of course these guidelines should be considered only as indicative since the legal framework for soil data collection at more detailed scale is still missing. The European Soil Database at 1:1,000,000 scale is on the other hand the scale of choice for the European Commission and will be one of the data layers to be included European Environmental Spatial Data Infrastructure (EESDI). Globally the information at 1:1,000,000 scale will form the base for deriving the European part of the Soil and Terrain Database (SOTER), coordinated by FAO and due to be completed in the near future. Soil Monitoring Sites 1 : 5000 Communes Spatial planning Precision farming EUROPEAN SOIL BUREAU

1st European summer school on soil survey 27 students (21 financed by JRC, 6 self financed) 11 Countries represented: Pl-2, Lt-2, Cz-2, Lv-2, Tr-3, H-9, Bg-1, Si-1, Sk-1, It-2 7 Instructors (financed by JRC): from Uk, Dk, Es, Nl, H (Including them, countries represented in the school:15) Number of JRC financed (students + instructors): 28 Participants for the field excursion (including JRC staff): 42 (local soil surveyors not included in the 42)