The need for soil information and DSFM activities: the EEA perspective

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The need for soil information and DSFM
activities the EEA perspective

• Anna Rita Gentile, Franz Daffner, Jaume Fons
• European Environment Agency
• European Topic Centre on Terrestrial Environment
• Digital Soil Mapping working group
• meeting
• Miskolc, 7-8 April 2005

2
Background

• Emerging soil protection policies need timely and
  reliable soil information.
• Inadequate infrastructure for soil information
  delivery
• No reporting obligations on soil
• Information owned by different institutions
• Possibility to improve the situation
• Better justification of requirements at European
  level
• Stronger coordination/integration of existing
  networks (ESBN, EIONET)
• Better specification in FP7 programme

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Existing networks

• EIONET
• Nominated by countries
• Capacity building in member states
• Focus on reporting obligations (moral)
• Cover a broad range of environmental issues
• ESBN
• Network of centres of excellence
• Providers of soil data know-how
• No own resources

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A step further

• Steering the process towards a European Soil
  Information System
• Combine capacities
• Define an action plan containing
• Objectives information requirements
• Definition of targets
• Implementation steps to Digital Soil Functional
  Map
• Road map to targets

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Why soil information is needed?

• Soil is a basis for human activities
• Ensuring sustainable production of biomass
• Spatial planning (e.g. Management of contaminated
  sites)
• Transboundary issues
• Tools for modeling and outlook (if...)
• But, local component important

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Soil Information System
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Information required for...

• Covering as much as possible the eight threats
• Answering relevant policy questions already
  addressed by the Commission
• Making use of existing reporting obligations
  derived from other policies
• Identification of hot spots
• Being prepared for new issues

8
Monitoring and information specifications

• Linked to policy-relevant indicators and related
  data needs
• Integrated with existing European monitoring and
  reporting activities (other media)
• Tiered system
• country
• risk areas/regions of special interest
• site-specific
• Step-by-step implementation and harmonisation
• Guidelines for national monitoring

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Soil information

• Basic soil information. Soil survey should
  provide the baseline
• Available resource
• Characterisation of soils
• Assessment of time related soil information
  (changes)
• Evaluation of more dynamic properties
• Element contents variation
• OM
• Nutrients
• Heavy metals, pesticides,

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Digital Soil Functional Map

• Advantages
• Interpreted data
• Easy integration
• Quality improvement (methodology)
• Easy accessibility and transfer of information
• Challenges
• Too much expectations
• Quality data source
• Scaling problems integration of different data
  sources

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Components of the Soil Information System

• Basic soil properties
• Soil type
• Physico-chemical properties
• Texture, bulk density, depth
• Hydrological properties. Water permeability
• pH, base saturaion, OM
• Problem areas for different threats
• Vulnerability
• Risk
• Hot spots

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Components of the Soil Information System
(continued)

• Soil functions/properties affected by different
  threats
• Yield function (potential for agricultural
  production)
• Buffering and filtration (pollutants, nutrients)
• Regulatory function for water balance
• Habitat, Rareness

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Example soil sealing (urbanisation)

• Loss of soil resources by urbanisation
• Type of soils ? Soil survey
• Extension?
• Where?
• Does it have an impact on agriculture?
  Intensification,
• Other functions (OM, filtration)

?
Land cover
DSFM
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Work plan for 2005

• Action plan for soil information (EEA)
• Rationale
• Basic reference data sets
• Information Services
• Output. Report covering
• Information requirement specifications
• Action plan for monitoring (technical options,
  organisational settings for monitoring)
• Potential connections to other sectors
• Input to DSM working group

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Where we are

• Definition of EEA vision
• Link to other EEA projects
• Neighborhood
• Indicators
• European Spatial Data Infrastructure
• PRA.MS
• New national expert at EEA

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Next steps

• Digital Soil Mapping working group meeting. April
• Outline of the report. Agreement on contents
  contribution. May
• Annotated index
• Contributions
• Schedule
• Final report. November.

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Further work

• Concept for DSFM
• Consolidation of the methodology for DSFM
• Integration with related data link to indicators
• Improving information exchange
• Test at pilot areas, different scales