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

2. 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

4. Organisational Chart

5. Institutional Actions

6. 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

7. Towards a Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection
Bruxelles, le
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

8. 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

9. A common soil information system for an enlarged European Union

10. European Soil Information System
Soil data
EUROPEAN SOIL BUREAU NETWORK

11. CD ROM of the European Soil Database

12. Planned extension of the European Soil Database

13. 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.

14. 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

15. 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)