Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
and ISSS. After initial testing in three areas, involving Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, the United
States, and Canada, the methodology was endorsed by the ISSS Working Group on World Soils
and Terrain Digital Database (DM). In 1993, the Procedures Manual for Global and National Soils
and Terrain Digital Databases was jointly published by UNEP, ISSS, FAO, and ISRIC, thus
obtaining international recognition. The Procedures Manual is available in English, French, and
Spanish (UNEP/ISRIC/FAO/ISSS, 1995).
The SOTER concept was originally developed for application at country (national) scale and
national SOTER maps have been prepared, with ISRICÔs assistance, for Uruguay (1:1 M), Kenya
(1:1 M), Hungary (1:500,000), and Jordan and Syria (1:500,000). More information is available
from ISRICÔs SOTER website at
http://www.isric.nl/SOTER.htm
; the Kenya data are downloadable
at
http://www.isric.nl/SOTER/KenSOTER.zip.
The original idea of SOTER was to develop this system worldwide at an equivalent scale of
1:1 M in order to replace the paper Soil Map of the World (Sombroek, 1984). It soon became
obvious that the resources were lacking to tackle and complete this huge task in a reasonable
timeframe. However, this still remains the long-term objective pursued on a country-by-country
basis.
In the early 1990s, FAO recognized that a rapid update of the Soil Map of the World would be
a feasible option if the original map scale of 1:5 M were retained, and started, together with UNEP,
to fund national updates at 1:5 M scale of soil maps in Latin America and Northern Asia. At the
same time, FAO tested the physiographic SOTER approach in Asia (Van Lynden, 1994), Africa
(Eschweiler, 1993), Latin America (Wen, 1993), the CIS, the Baltic States, and Mongolia (Stolbo-
voy, 1996).
These parallel programs of ISRIC, UNEP, and FAO merged together in mid-1995, when at a
meeting in Rome the three major partners agreed to join the resources devoted to these programs
and work toward a common world SOTER approach, covering the globe at 1:5 M scale by the
17th IUSS Congress of 2002, to be held in Thailand. Since then, other international organizations
have shown support and collaborated to develop SOTER databases for speciÝc regions. This is, for
instance, the case for Northern and Central Eurasia, where the International Institute for Applied
System Analysis (IIASA) joined FAO and the national institutes that were involved, and for the
European Soils Bureau (ESB) in the countries of the European Union. The ongoing and planned
activities are summarized in Table 12.2 and Figure 12.1.
Table 12.2
Operational Plan for a World SOTER: 1995-2006
Published
Date
Region
Status
Main Agencies Involved
Latin America and the Caribbean
Published
ISRIC, UNEP, FAO, CIAT, national
soil institutes
1998
Northeastern Africa
Published
FAO-IGAD
1998
South and Central Africa
North and Central Eurasia
Ongoing
Published
FAO-ISRIC-national inst.
IIASA, Dokuchaev Institute,
Academia Sinica, FAO
2002
1999
Eastern Europe
Published
FAO-ISRIC-Dutch Government-
national inst.
2000
Western Europe
Mahreb
Ongoing
Ongoing
ESB-FAO-national inst.
ESB-FAO-ISRIC-national inst.
2002
2004
West Africa
Proposal submitted
Awaits funding (ISRIC, IITA)
Southeast Asia
Proposal discussed
Awaits funding
U.S. and Canada
Own Effort
NRCS
Own effort
Australia
Own Effort
CSIRO
Own effort
