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DRAFT Media Release

February 2011

Global soils uncovered at Oceania meeting

From red clays under the rainforests of Sumatra to yellow sands under the great wheat fields of Western Australia, soil resources are being scrutinised like never before to help address the big challenges facing our world. Soil scientists from the Oceania region — Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and the Pacific Islands — plus Asia and Europe met last week to discuss and showcase their contributions in the quest to produce the world’s first freely-available, fine-scale, 3-dimensional digital map of the globe’s soils.

In an address to soil scientists and agency officials launching the Oceania Node of the GlobalSoilMap.net project ­— an initiative supported at the international level by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ­— Dr Neil McKenzie from CSIRO Australia and Oceania Node leader, said that soils, as a finite resource, must be carefully managed to help tackle the big issues like producing more food.

“To address the challenges of food security and environmental sustainability, we need scientific information on the health of our soils and to inform the steps that we take to manage our land and farming systems better,” he said.

According to Dr Neil McKenzie, the information produced in the GlobalSoilMap.net project will allow soil science to better feed into other disciplines, such as climate and water science and will also give many countries access to new technology and training in new ways of collecting soil information.

“Through the Oceania Node partnership, we are seeking to build technical capability in each country to share soil information that will benefit all. We need to know the current condition of our soils, where there are risks of degradation, the size of our carbon stocks and the potential for increasing crop yields.

“Over the last few years we have been building an international network of leading scientists and technologists who have a common interest in generating much better information on condition of the world’s soils,” he said.

The collaborative effort will yield new ways of viewing soil information and online applications will allow users to access the best available estimates of significant soil properties at any depth down to 2 metres on 90 by 90 metre squares across the world. According to Dr McKenzie, the technology has come along in leaps and bounds.

“Just as we’ve seen weather forecasting techniques revolutionised with people using online information in completely new ways, we are confident that there will be many new opportunities for soil information including mobile phone applications.”

The activities of the Oceania Node group of scientists are mirrored around the world as hundreds of scientists from over a hundred agencies across eight Nodes pull together to collaborate on the project, according to Dr Alfred Hartemink, international coordinator of GlobalSoilMap.net, based at ISRIC - World Soil Information in The Netherlands.

“The GlobalSoilMap.net project is truly global. It is not just assembling a global database of information on soil properties; it is also creating and fostering a truly global collaboration of relevant governmental and scientific agencies,” said Dr Hartemink.

“While we are creating the necessary scientific knowhow and computer infrastructure to create, maintain, update and distribute the data, we have a priority view on the broader picture of applying soil science. In the process, the project is contributing to revitalising soil science, to the training of a new generation of digitally-literate soil scientists and to better processes of creating and using soils information.” Alfred Hartemink.

Currently the Oceania Node partnership involves science and environmental agencies from Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and The Pacific.