The European Soil Data Center (ESDAC) is the thematic center for soil-related data in Europe. It was established in 2006 and is one of ten environmental data centers in Europe. ESDAC serves as a single access point for policy-relevant soil data and information at the EU level. It works to meet the data requirements of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Environment and the European Environment Agency. ESDAC collects, quality checks, hosts and distributes soil data from various sources and makes it available through its online portal. It supports soil data use and sharing across scales from local to global through partnerships with other networks.

1. The European Soil Data Center
欧洲土壤数据中心
Gergely Tóth, Panos Panagos, Marc van Liedekerke,, Luca Montanarella
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
JOINT RESEARCH CENTRE
Institute for Environment and Sustainability

2. •is the thematic centre for soil related
data in Europe
•one of the ten environmental data
centres in Europe
- established in 2006 by DG ENV,
DG JRC, ESTAT and the EEA (Go4)
The European Soil Data Centre
(ESDAC):

3. • Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS)
• European Environmental Data Centers (Go4)
EUROSTAT
Waste
Natural resources
IPP
JRC
Soil
Forest
EEA
Climate Change
Water
Air
Land use
Biodiversity
DG ENV
Data requirements

4. The “technical arrangement” in the Go4 specifies that:
“a data centre will act as the primary data contact point for DG ENV in
order to fulfill DG ENV’s information needs.
It will have the task of ensuring that the collected data fit DG ENV’s
requirements, that data collection is organized in an efficient way, that the
necessary quality assurance is performed and that all relevant existing
data are accessible to other parties.
It will have the primary responsibility for organizing the availability and
quality of the data required for policy.
Data collection and quality control activities in relation to such data need
to be fully co-ordinated with the data centre, which should also take steps
to ensure that user needs are taken fully into account”
Data Centres are driven by DG ENV requirements
Background ESDAC

5. • ESDAC becomes the single focal point for policy relevant soil data and information
at EU level (one of the 10 Data Centers)
• DG ENV and EEA requirements are taken into account (yearly)
• New data will be produced by JRC and quality-controlled and hosted in the ESDAC
• ESDAC is one node in a system consisting of distributed data nodes: as a soil data
node, it holds soil data at European level, while other soil data nodes at regional,
national or global level focus on data of different scales.
• ESDAC allows linking to data and information from National providers, fully
complying with the INSPIRE principle of delocalized data systems in a networked
approach (interoperability)
• ESDAC is as “open” as legally possible, meaning that if data and information
resident in the ESDAC can legally be published, the system will do. Even when a
product is protected for access by only privileged users, efforts will be made in
order to present its metadata to the user.
ESDAC Operation

6. Information Providers

7. ESDAC Catalogue of available resources
Metadata system that describes and points to various soil resource
types: datasets, services/applications, documents, events, projects and
external links
ESDAC Map Viewer
Navigate key soil data for Europe
European Soil Portal
The virtual place where all ESDAC resources are located. The current
data and information service makes available four types of products:
data, documents, data-based applications and scanned maps. In addition
it provides access to: soil projects(FP6-FP7), documentation on the EU
soil threats, Awareness Raising activities and Events-Presentations
ESDAC Components

8. ESDAC User Base (Mailing List)
> 2.000 Members
Monthly Newsletter
Inform the Soil Communities about the latest news in Soil
Network of Experts
European Soil Bureau Network, EIONET
HelpDesk
Support is important and ESDAC provides Helpdesk (more
than 500 Requests on helpdesk in 2011)
IT Support
Long Term Mandate
ESDAC Tools

9. Download the for free (no costs) by accepting the license
agreement
Simple process: Enter the User Details in a Web form
Name, Organisation, E-mail, Country of Origin, purpose for
which
the data will be used.
ESDAC Authorisation
ESDAC helpdesk Authorises/Rejects the user request
ESDAC Data Log
Useful information/feedback both for ESDAC and for
Project Managers
Data: Authentication Mechanism

10. In practice:
• inventory of EU soil data; creation of metadata; make available on
eusoils.jrc.it
• Adapted http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ with an ESDAC corner
• Development of a new technical platform
• Metadata catalogue according to INSPIRE suggested standards
(ISO19115) – populated with metadata for local holdings
• Local search of the metadata
• In process of setting-up JRC Framework contract for the performance of
soil related studies (call published)
• In process of setting-up a list of soil data providers (in preparation)
• Collection of data requirements from DG ENV
• Established a working link between EIONET/EEA and ESDAC in relation
to data on “contaminated land/sites”
ESDAC development

11. In practice
• Launch the new technical platform (October 2008)
• Extend this new technical platform in order to make it interoperable with
other meta-data catalogues (de-centralized; distributed search)
• Incorporate new data/metadata (including Biosoil and LUCAS)
• Start work with a new ESBN working group: how could ESDAC work with
Member States in order to build an INSPIRE compliant soil data
community
• We encourage organizations to send to ESDAC metadata concerning
their soil data holdings to integrate in the ESDAC catalogue, but pointing
to external source
ESDAC development
ESDAC ESDAC: EU - node
Member State - nodes
Soil Metadata;
Soil data

12. Data distribution
Since Jan 2011, an automated
ESDAC data distribution
system
In 2011: 1308 data requests
(3 times more comparing to
2010)
17 datasets are delivered
through this system
Dataset Number of Requests
Average Monthly
requested rate
Available
Since
European Soil Database 1164 24.25 Nov-06
Soil Organic Carbon 192 2.67 Nov-04
Soil Erosion (PESERA) 193 2.68 Nov-04
Soil Compaction 18 1.50 Oct-09
Salinization 19 1.58 Oct-09
pH 18 1.80 Jan-10
TOTAL 1604

13. Geographical
of data requests
Global Impact: ESDAC has served user
data requests from 68 countries
12% of requests come from outside of
the European Union
EU Policy: European Commission
services account for 2.5% (39
registrations) of the total requests
Panagos et al, (2012) Land Use Policy Journal

14. Application of ESDAC data
Intended Use No of Requests %
Education 53 3.30%
Education & Research 39 2.43%
Policy 133 8.29%
Research 1085 67.64%
Assessment - Study 212 13.22%
Other 82 5.11%
PhD, 131
Other, 201
Project, 279
Model, 382
Publication, 12
Master (M.Sc), 47
Undergraduate, 21
PostDoc, 8
Panagos et al, (2012) Land Use Policy Journal
Scale No of Requests %
European/Global Scale 506 31.55%
National/Regional Scale 519 32.59%
Not defined 579 36.10%
Scale of data use
Intended Use

15. ESDAC and policy making (1)
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP): SoCo, Soil Erosion rates,
Organic carbon, Less Favourable Areas(LFA)
EU Forest Action Plan: Biosoil forest soil monitoring programme
Climate Change policies: Soil organic carbon data
Land use policy: soil organic carbon, pH, compaction, soil erosion
and salinization are used to identify land use changes
Renewable Energies (Biofuel): ESDAC Data for calculation
guidelines of land carbon stocks
Protection of EU consumers and food security: models
estimating exposure of pesticides to soil organisms
Land Take (Soil Sealing) and food security: During the period
1990-2006 the lost Potential Agricultural Production Capability
is estimated around 6.2 Million tons of wheat in 19 EU Member
States

16. Water management and water protection policies: Soil texture
data, soil permeability and organic carbon data are used as
inputs for pan-European flood alert models
Research and development (RTD) policies: FP6 and FP7 project
results available in the European Soil Portal (ENVASSO,
RamSoil, SoilTrEC, Digisoil, iSoil, eSoter, etc)
Support to EUROSTAT: ESDAC data are the input for the
formulation of the Soil Erosion and the Soil Quality indicator
Development policies of the European Union: the Harmonized
World Soil Database, GlobalSoilMap.net, European Digital Map
Archive (EuDASM)
Education / Media policies: Soil Atlas of Europe, Soil Atlas of
the Northern Circumpolar Region, European Atlas of Soil
Biodiversity
ESDAC and policy making (2)

17. ESDAC and policy making (3)
Spatial planning and urban development: 970,000 ha of
agricultural land has been lost in 20 EU Member States in this
ten year period due to urbanisation
INSPIRE Directive: ESDAC and ESBN participates in the soil
data specifications
Rural development Policies: Soil Erosion data are used for rural
development programmes
GEOSS, SEIS: ESDAC is part of GLOSIS (Global Soil
Information System) which is included in GEOSS (Global Earth
Observation System of Systems)
GMES(Global Monitoring for Environment and Security): New
approaches for soil erosion modelling have been applied by
using remote sensed Satellite Images
Desertification: European Soil Database has been used in Italy
& Portugal for policies to combat desertification

18. Soil
Monitoring
Sites
ICSU/ISRIC/FAO/UNEP
EU
Member States
Regions
Communes
World Data Centre for Soil
(WDC Soil)
Operated by ISRIC on behalf of ICSU
European Soil Data Centre
(ESDAC)
Operated by JRC
National Soil Data Centre
to be defined
Regional Soil Data Centre
to be defined
Soil information at different scales
1:5,000,000
1:1,000,000
1:250,000
1:50,000
e.g. BIOSOIL

19. ESDAC in operation
requirements
Website
+
Internal databases
+
HelpDesk

20. ESDAC :
http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/library/esdac/
•Data (e.g. European Soil Database)
•Maps (e.g. EuDASM archive of sacanned maps)
•Documents (e.g. ESBN Research Reports)
•On-line applications (e.g. using ESDB)
•Data distribution
•Help Desk for problem solving
•Download of data (some data are protected and
access is subject to registration)
•User base : 1400+ users have been registered
•Communication with User Base:
•Mailing list, free subscription
•Regular mails for communication of
updates

21. Data, maps, applications
Data (eg European Soil Database)
On-line services/applications (eg ESDB data)
Maps (as images)

22. Lucas topsoil sampling locations

23. Bampa et al 2011
LUCAS data (SOC content)

24. ESDAC: value added products
OCTOP -- Organic Carbon in topsoils (as images)
Pan-European Soil Erosion Risk Assessment
(PESERA)

25. Data CD/DVD: Distribution
of Soil Information

27. http://www.globalsoilmap.net/
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Globally Integrated African Soil Information
Service (ASIS)

29. http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
Thank you for your attention!