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1. ISRIC's Fruitful Meeting
21-Jan-2014
Alessandro Samuel Rosa
Guest Researcher
Working plan of visit
Jan-Dec2014

2. Origin
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Descendant of Italian and German immigrants
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Born in a small town in Southern Brazil
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15.000 inhabitants
Raised in a small family farm
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15 hectares
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Lived many years in Southern Brazil
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Last two years living near by Rio de Janeiro

4. Background - education
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Agro Technical School (2000 - 03)
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Trainee – farm management, USA (2003 – 04)
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Federal University of Santa Maria (2004 – 12)
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Secondary education teaching license - Agro Technical
Schools
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Bachelor's degree in Agronomy
Master's degree in Soil Science (DSM)
Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (2012 - 16)
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PhD candidate – Agronomy-Soil Science (DSM)

5. Background - experience
Farming: annual and
perennial crops,
dairy cattle, pigs,
chickens, and many
others
● Ferralsol with high
iron oxides content
and kaolinite (1:1
phylossilicate)
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Source: Dr. Ricardo Dalmolin
Federal University of Santa Maria

6. Background - experience
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Educational activities
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soil museum, website, newsletter
Research activities (2004 - 14)
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routine soil laboratory analysis
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mineralogy, FTIR and 13C NMR spectroscopy, soil
quality indicators, soil fauna, constructed soils
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soil classification, soil and land use surveys
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DSM, GIS, remote sensing, geostatistics

7. Sandwich program (2014)
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Coordination for the Improvement of Higher
Education Personnel (CAPES)
Supervisors
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Dr. Gustavo Vasques – Embrapa Soils
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Dr. Lúcia Anjos – Federal Rural University of Rio
de Janeiro
Dr. Gerard Heuvelink – ISRIC (Why?)
Main collaborator
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Dr. Ricardo Dalmolin – Federal University of
Santa Maria

8. Activities during 2014
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PhD research project
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GSIF project
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GSIF R-package
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WOSIS and World Soil Profiles
documentation
Universal Soil Classification System
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Tropical Soils

9. PhD research project
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Evaluate the main sources of uncertainty in
DSM under different database scenarios
1) How accurate are freely available environmental
covariates? How much uncertainty reduction is
achieved when more accurate environmental
covariates are used?
2) How do calibration sample size and sampling
design affect model composition and prediction
accuracy? What is the trade-off between map
accuracy and monetary cost?

10. PhD research project
3) How strongly correlated are environmental
covariates? Is prediction accuracy improved when
they are transformed to their principal
components?

11. ●
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350 + 60 soil observations
topsoil
particle size distribution, ECEC, organic
carbon content
many environmental covariates
regression-kriging approach

12. Questions? Comments?
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Presentation will be available at
http://pt.slideshare.net/alessandrosamuelrosa
Images were obtained from Wikipedia, my personal
archive, and from web profiles of cited researchers
Contact:
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E-mail: alessandro.rosa@wur.nl
Phone number: 0031 06 4435 9563