Seventh European Soil Partnership Plenary Assembly, 10 September 2020, online (zoom platform). Presenter: Maria Fantappié

1. Maria Fantappiè
ESP-Pillar4 chair, CREA-AA, Firenze
maria.fantappie@crea.gov.it

2. Pillar 4 - Objectives
Build an enduring and authoritative system for monitoring and
forecasting the condition of the Earth’s soil resources (…) to meet
international and regional information needs
Build on national and within-country systems through a collaborative
network and the distributed design
The global soil information system should include a training program
Integrate the global soil information system into the much larger effort
to build and maintain the Global Earth Observing System of Systems
(GEOSS)

3. Pillar 4 – Data products
done ongoing future
Soil property maps (grids) - Coarse- (1 km) grids of soil
properties
GSOC GSS
GSOCseq
GSER
BlackSoils (?)
GSOP
Others (?)
Soil profile/point data: Tier 1 - Comprehensive soil
profile and analytical database
Tier 2 - World reference soil profile and analytical
database
1) The definition of a data
sharing policy.
2) The INSPIRE
harmonization
Soil data
distributed
system
Soil property maps (grids):
fine-resolution (100 m) grids of soil properties
Doubt in the opportunity to produce
such a kind maps (for the implications
into the local policies)
National soil type maps 1:1 000,000 to develop an
improved global polygon coverage
Doubt on the feasibility and on the
opportunity of such a kind of map.

4. ESP & soil-related projects
GSP-NFP
ESP-
P4WG
EJP-SOIL ENVASSO GS-SOIL LANDMARK RECARE CIRCASA
2020-2025 2005-2008 2009-2012 2015-2019 2013-20182017-2020
Number of
European
countries
29/37 18/37 24/37 25/37 17/37 15/37 17/37 6/37
Number of institutions 47 36 31 18 27 11
Number of institutions which
are in ESP-GSP4
36 5 5 2 6 1
The EJP-SOIL project is the international soil-related project
involving the largest number of European countries and the
largest number of European institution working in soil research
in the last 15 years

5. The EJP-SOIL working packages

6. EJP-SOIL WP6 - Supporting harmonised soil
information and reporting.
The following EJP-SOIL-WP6 objectives are shared with the ESP-Pillar 4
1. soil information harmonization, through the establishment of a harmonized distributed soil information
system maintained by countries
2. stocktaking of soil data owners and definition of sharing policies
3. stocktaking and harmonization of existing soil monitoring systems
4. capacity building on open soil information systems, web-services, INSPIRE, UML/XML, code lists,
vocabularies/thesaurus/taxonomies/ontologies, with the aim of establishing the expertise and the necessary
infrastructures for soil storing also in those countries which currently don't have a National Soil Information
Institution (NSII) (with the collaboration of WP5)
5. contributing to national or international reports and mapping of soil resources (soil baselines, indicators of soil
degradation and fertility, and modeling of their target values), defining common procedures for mapping and
reporting (with the collaboration of WP3 and WP4) e.g. CM2 call related to GSOCseq map, SR5 call related to
GSERmap
6. highlighting pressures on soil functions, delineating risk maps (with the collaboration of WP3 and WP4)
7. promoting best sustainable soil management practices and map their effect on soil properties (with the
collaboration of all other WPs)

7. Deliverable Due
date
Report on harmonized procedures for creation of databases and maps Jan-21
Report on the national and EU regulations on agricultural soil data sharing and
national monitoring activities
Jul-21
Proposal of methodological development for the LUCAS programme in accordance
with national monitoring programmes
Jul-21
Software framework for a shared agricultural soil information system Jan-22
Guidelines for accounting and mapping agricultural soil carbon, fertility and
degradation changes at different scales
Jan-22
Geodatabase (distributed system) on agricultural soil properties including SOC and
agricultural soil functional properties related to water and nutrients
Jan-24
Procedure for mapping of agricultural potential in different present and future
climate conditions
Nov-24
Final version of the agricultural soil information system for EU populated with the
final version of project datasets
Dec-24
EJP-SOIL WP6 - Supporting harmonised soil
information and reporting.

8. How to enlarge the european coutries
participation to ESP-Pillar 4 activites?
Question
Organization of conferences, and
other social initiatives and media,
by the ESP Steering Committee
When does the ESP Steering Committee meet? How
frequently? Who convenes it and organizes its work, and
who is planning the activities?
8 countries don’t have a NFP Is it possible to involve 3 of those (Denmark, Ireland,
and Lithuania) into the GSP-ESP activities through the
EJP-SOIL project?
For the other 5 countries (Bosnia, Luxembourg, Malta,
Romania and Serbia), is it possible to contact the
institutions conducting soil research in those countries?
Who can do it?
11 countries have a NFP, but don’t
have a member inside the P4WG
(Pillar 4 Working Group of ESP).
7 of these (Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Netherlands,
Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland) are involved in EJP-
SOIL-WP6. ? Is it possible to ask then for a formal
recognition of this “de facto” contribution to the
respective NFP?

9. Suggestions for the future
• Merging the Pillar 4 and Pillar 5 is suggested, at least for the
activities concerning the harmonization of soil databases.
• There is the need to clarify the roles of the different actors (ESP
chair and vice-chair, ESP and GSP secretariat, chairs of the ESP
pillars, representative of EASP, representative of ITPS, NFPs, INSII
representatives, JRC-ESDAC).
• Enhance the collaboration between ESP and EJP-SOIL defining
common objectives, scheduling of activities, procedures and rules
for collaboration
• The experience of the EJP-SOIL project could possibly be extended
through GSP and ESP also to those European countries which are
not involved in the project?