1. Global Soil Map, the Pacific and the Oceania node
Mike Grundy and Allan Hewitt
Wednesday 15 Sept 2010
HOAFS, Fiji

2. What should soils information give us?
‘grass roots’ food security and agricultural productivity information
Management of land degradation
Carbon mitigation / sequestration and carbon accounting
Agriculture and forest response to climate change and variability
A toolbox for agricultural extension
New global challenge – make soil mapping do this
everywhere

3. The solution? – Global Soil Map
Information should be consistent and global.
Currently regional or national systems and inconsistent;
Focus on functional soil attributes
Eg. for simulation modelling and model – data assimilation
Connected to Global Earth Observation activities;
Fine resolution
To reflect and influence ecosystem and agricultural processes (100m grid or better)
Soil depth functions consistently defined; and
Connected with the rich national and regional soil mapping systems – in particular:
Pacific Soils Portal Initiative

4. Global soil map is:
A world-wide consortium to produce this new and needed form of soil information
Organised in nodes with overall coordination from ISRIC at Wageningin University
A formal MOU has been signed by most nodes
Initial funding from Gates’ Foundation
African Soil Information System
Global soils coordination
Further funding being sought for overall system and for each Node
Now underway in Oceania

5. Global soil map brings:
an opportunity to leverage funding for the pacific soils portal
Stronger development of the pacific soils portal by applying new international best practice methods to –
correlate and capture existing soil data,
fill gaps in existing coverage,
provide soil property maps (carbon, phosphorus, depth, particle size, etc) as well as soil class maps,
provide and support information delivery technologies for local soil information products
a global support fraternity for emerging pacific soils expertise
unified soils capacity building in the pacific – through the data preparation, modelling, knowledge delivery and cyber-infrastructure maintenance phases
New training opportunities  
ESAFS 2009

6. Global soil map and the Pacific Soils Portal initiative
Builds on and references existing soils knowledge
Makes existing soil mapping more understandable and more widely applicable
Priority: training component for soil scientists for the region
Part of a seamless Oceanic and Global process / network
ESAFS 2009

7. Ambition for Oceania? Develop an integrated project across the node
Defined roles for each partner
Data collation and management
Adequate funding
Provide both temporal and spatial richness –
re-evaluation of the current stock of data
major gain will come from new measurement
Establish / support soil monitoring programs
Increase involvement with the remote sensing community –
through model – data fusion projects where both the remote sensing algorithms and the data sets improve
Fill gaps with Digital Soil Assessment and related approaches
ESAFS 2009

8. Global soil map operational steps
Develop project strategy
In-country data inventory
Base information capture
Soil data
Co-variates
Base data analysis and soil information modelling
Estimation, modelling . . .
Tiling and / or aggregation
Review and evaluation
Capacity building

9. Current institutions The University of Sydney, Australia
Lead contacts: Alex McBratney, Budiman Minasny
Pacific nations – SPC – Land Resources Division
Lead contact: Inoke Ratukalau (for endorsement at the meeting)
CSIRO, Australia
Lead contacts: Neil McKenzie, Mike Grundy
Landcare Research, New Zealand
Lead contact: Allan Hewitt
Indonesia - ICALRD
Lead contact: Prof Dr Irsal Las (and his replacement)
PNG – to be discussed

10. Current priorities Develop sustainable funding basis
Confirm area of focus
Australia – PNG – Indonesia – New Zealand – Pacific Nations – others?
Define and establish governance and roles, including centralised server and data manager
Implement the GSM process
Define and foster relationships
between Node and GSM as a whole
Between countries / regions within the Node
ESAFS 2009

11. Nations/territories currently listed for Oceania
Australasia
Melanesia
Micronesia
Polynesia
Australia** (21)
Fiji*
Federate States of Micronesia***
American Samoa (USA)***
Christmas Is*
Indonesia (240)
Guam (USA)***
Cook Islands (NZ)**
Cocos (Keeling Is)
New Caledonia
Kiribati
French Polynesia (Fr)
New Zealand**(4)
Papua New Guinea**(6)
Marshall Islands***
Niue (NZ)**
Norfolk Is*
Solomon Is***
Nauru
Pitcairn Islands (UK)
Vanuatu
Nthn Mariana Is (USA)***
Samoa
Palau***
Tokelau (NZ)
Tonga
Tuvalu

12. Today
Alert the countries of the Pacific to their key role in the Oceania node group – getting to know each other
Discuss ways to work together
Including a planned February meeting in Bogor Indonesia
Alert HOAFS to the proposed link to the Pacific Soils Portal initiative
Request HOAFS endorsement:
That Inoke Ratukalau be the representative of the nations within SPC within the Oceania node of the Global Soil Map initiative

13. Thank you Mike.Grundy@csiro.au
Contact Us
Phone: or
Web:
Thank you

14. ASRIS to depth spline process
Conventional
Mapping
Grid/raster
90m cells
Rasterization
Attach to grid
Standard
depth
mean
Re-fit
spline
Fit spline
Soil profile data
-variable intervals
-missing data
Depth spline
function
1 cm intervals
Standard depths

15. Surface pH ASRIS vector polygon to depth spline 90m grid