Development of a bottom-up Approach for Soil Indicators: Organic Carbon and Soil Loss Assessment for the Italian Territory

Many EU policy areas are dealing with soils. The comparability of information on soils in Europe is limited since it is based on data collected over a long time span using different methodologies. A more harmonised monitoring approach and methodology is envisaged in the Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection (COM 2006, 231). A new approach that exploits soil data and expertise available at local level, has been developed in a pilot project that involves the National Environmental Protection Agency, Regional Soil Survey Services and European Soil Bureau. The project is the first experiment at National level to develop a Multi-Scale European Soil Information System (MEUSIS). The most accurate and up-to-date soil data are used directly by institutions and experts involved in soil survey at local level to assess soil status indicators (organic carbon content in soils and soil loss). To simplify harmonization problems and in order to set up a common infrastructure for data sharing, output data were represented by means of a reference grid (1km pixels), built following the recommendations of the 1st Workshop on European Reference Grids in the context of the INSPIRE Directive. Furthermore an exchange format for storing data and metadata information has been set up jointly by the working group. For assessment, local experts can use the most adequate procedures, following their judgement, for instance to cope with different levels of data availability and/or reliability. Record of all this, procedures and kind of input data, is stored in approach is recognized by the European Parliament which by amendment voted for the introduction of a specific monitoring requirement in Article 7.

VINCI Ialina;  FUMANTI Fiorenzo;  GIANDON Paolo;  PANAGOS Panagiotis; 

2010-01-13

University of of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU)

JRC48441