Digital soil mapping for soil sustainable management

Issues, challenges, and opportunities to deliver a global fine grid of essential soil properties. The role of the GLADSOILMAP research consortium.

Soils are central to many global issues such as food security, water security, climate change, sustainable energy, human health, and biodiversity protection. However, most of the soils of the world are under threat. To tackle these global issues, firm actions should be undertaken at the local level. Several ongoing projects aim to deliver worldwide digital soil information. All these projects are based on the concept of Digital Soil Mapping (DSM). We will explain this concept and differentiate approaches that are top-down from bottom-up. The top-down approach relies on a single organization to make a global map based on a global dataset collected from different countries. The bottom-up approach encourages each country to make their own soil map, results from all countries are then aggregated at a global level. Broad-scale DSM achievement is not trivial, and more attention should be paid to deliver the best and most accurate products associated with their uncertainty. The presentation will give an overview of these projects and their pro and cons. It will then focus on the main research and harmonization needs to make these projects converge to an acceptable product for a broad variety of end-users including farmers, land-use planners, and local, national and international policymakers.