This presentation was presented during the second workshop of the International Network of Soil Information Institutions (INSII) that took place at FAO headquarters 24-25 november 2016. The presentation was made by Neil McKenzie from the CSIRO Australia

1. Stakeholders and synergies of the
global soil information system
CSIRO AGRICULTURE & FOOD
Neil McKenzie
ITPS Southwest Pacific Representative
CSIRO Australia

2. Overview
Getting our own house in order
• Purpose: don’t stray from the global focus
• Strategy: ensure mutual benefit for all INSII members
• Regain momentum: let’s learn from past successes and failures
• Implementation: establish the core teams now

3. The global soil challenge
We need a 75% increase in food
production by 2050 with severe
constraints:
• finite arable land
• yield plateaux for major crops
• increasing cost of energy, nutrients
and emissions
• soil degradation
• water scarcity in key regions
• biodiversity decline
Current systems of land use are being
disrupted by a changing climate

4. Why do we need a distinct global soil information system?
To answer critical questions at the global scale
• How much arable land will be available in coming
decades?
• How much food and fiber can it produce?
• Where are rates of soil change affecting ecosystem
services?
To provide the global context for local decisions
• Most urban people are protected from local resource
depletion.
• The soil and water used to support them is scattered all
over the planet.
• How do land use decisions in one district, country or
region have consequences elsewhere?
To supply a fundamental data set for
understanding Earth-system processes
• What are the stores and fluxes of water, carbon, and
nutrients?

5. Priority outputs
• Consistent set of data products
– global grid of soil functional properties
– global map of soil and land types (polygons)
– primary data from soil profiles (i.e. direct measurements)
• Monitoring system
– Flexible design
– Implementation in priority regions
– Addition of SoilStat to the FAO statistical system
• Synthesis, forecasting and interpretation
– Regular reports on global soil condition
– Supply of information to global reporting mechanisms
– Diverse information products available online

6. People, systems and governance
• The global soil information system requires a significant
investment and a major technical effort – synergies will not
emerge through voluntary mechanisms
• Critical need for a governance structure that is:
– based on a model of partnership and mutual benefit
– representative
– transparent
– committed to scientific and technical excellence
• Essential to establish an international project team with
responsibility for delivering Pillar 4
6 |

7. Mutual benefit
What should INSII members expect?
• Adoption of information standards will save costs and avoid
duplication
• Adoption of information standards will provide easier access to
third-party tools (e.g. simulation models, mobile apps)
• Training and capability development delivered via Pillar Four will
strengthen national and local soil information delivery
• Easier access to the international scientific community and their
technologies (e.g. best practices for digital soil mapping)
• International assessments of soil resources for your jurisdiction
will be based on the best available data
• Better national decision-making due to the improved context and
better global data sets
7 |

8. Case study
A decade of lessons from GlobalSoilMap
• A program that aimed to apply
digital soil mapping globally
• Computationally ambitious but
tractable at the continental and
global scale
• Consensus on the minimum data set
• A focus on meeting the needs of
disciplines wanting to estimate
fluxes, stores and transformations of
water, carbon and nutrients
• A test run for Pillar Four that we all
need to understand
8 |
Advances in Agronomy Volume 125 (2014)

9. Enduring and consistent ideas
• The final global product had to be based on the best available
data.
• The spatial resolution had to be compatible with other global data
sets (e.g. terrain, hydrology, land cover, and land use).
• Soil functional properties relating to water, carbon and nutrients
were the priority.
• Every estimate for a soil property had to have an accompanying
estimate of uncertainty.
• An enduring and easy-to-update soil information system with
online access had to be built rather than a one-off product.
• The methods had to respect the sovereignty of nations.
9 |

10. Traps and controversies avoided
• Specify the final output rather than how to
get there
• The Technical Specifications were not
strongly aligned with a specific national or
regional approach
• Agreed to focus on the minimum data set
rather than an optimal data set
• The use of depth functions avoided complex
and intractable issues
• Despite complaints about slow progress, the
GlobalSoilMap community steadily
produced innovations, breakthroughs and
new products
10 |

11. Make room for diverse approaches
KSS Brisbane 26th October 2016 | Neil McKenzie11 |

12. Governance
• Relatively simple memorandum of
understanding
• Established a flexible regional
model that influenced the early
days of the GSP
• Voluntary and not intended to bind
parties if major funds became
available
12 |

13. Problems of ‘light governance’
• Lack of clarity and transparency within the
consortium with regard to decision making
• Vulnerable to dysfunction in some
institutions at critical times
• Confusion over the research versus
operational aspects of the project – most
members were pursuing research objectives
• Unintended message that the Consortium
was a club rather than an open entity
• Inconsistent statements on what
GlobalSoilMap would achieve
13 |

14. Other observations
• The Global Financial Crisis came at
the wrong time
• Loss of momentum caused by
attempts to integrate the project
within the Global Soil Partnership
• The timetable was ambitious and
remained unchanged even when
funds didn’t appear
• A few countries now have a very
useful grid-based coverage
• The new global grids from ISRIC
emerged from the effort
14 |
www.csiro.au/soil-and-landscape-grid

15. Priorities for INSII (1)
• Work towards greater clarity of purpose and
focus on the global issues
• Ensure greater openness and transparency of
governance and fully engage with our
stakeholders
• Ensure there is an operational rather than a
research focus
15 |

16. Priorities for INSII (2)
• Make sure we involve the best people and their teams from
around the world
• Commit to a culture of collaboration and excellence in everything
we do because culture is more powerful than strategy
• Establish the ‘Global Soil Spatial Data Information Centre’, secure
sufficient funds, and change the name
• Make the INSII meetings unmissable
16 |

17. Thank you
Neil McKenzie
Chief Research Scientist
CSIRO Agriculture and Food
Canberra, Australia
t +61 2 6246 4222
e neil.mckenzie@csiro.au