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Welcome to the European Soil Portal

This Soil Portal contributes to a thematic data infrastructure for soils in Europe. It presents data and information regarding soils at European level. It connects to activities within JRC concerning soil (JRC SOIL Action). It serves also as a vehicle to promote the activities of the European Soil Bureau Network. Spatial data collection and processing within this infrastructure is performed according to emerging ideas behind the INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) initiative. The European Soil Data Center is one of the ten environmental data centres in Europe and is the focal point for soil data at European level.

  • Soil Datasets: The European Soil Portal contains currently many soil data, maps, information and applications; most of the offered data are at European scale, while, when possible, links to national or global datasets are provided.
  • Soil at JRC: Soil activities within the JRC are concentrated in a specific JRC Action, called FP7 "Soil Data and Information Systems" or SOIL.
  • Documents - Publications: European Soil Bureau Research Reports, JRC Scientific and Technical Reports, Papers in Journals, Publications in Conferences, Posters and Publications in CD-ROMs, Glossary of Soil Terms.
  • Soil Projects: many past and current projects relate to the soil activities of JRC .
  • Soil Themes: covers various results for different soil themes such as Erosion, soil Organic Carbon Content, Salinisation, Landslides, Soil Compaction, Biodiversity and soil Contamination.
  • European Soil Bureau Network (ESBN): is a network of soil institutes supporting the JRC soil activities
  • Events - Presentations in various events(Conferences, Workshops, Meetings, Summer Schools) which are related to the work that the Land Management Unit is doing in relation to the European Soil Bureau Network. Calendar of future events is also available.
  • Awareness Raising Our Goal as Soil Action is to Establish an action plan for the development of measures/programmes/initiatives to raise awareness of the importance of soil across European society (i.e. policy makers, general public, universities, schools, industry, etc.).
  • What's new? chronology of items added to this soil portal. Get the NEWS either in XML RSS feed or Atom format and the monthly Newsletters.
  • Utilities - Various : A mailing list has been set up in order to keep interested persons up to date with the latest contents on this site. Other Tools such as the Search Engine are also available.
  • Team - Action SOIL: the people at JRC behind the soil activities.

  • Links: key pointers to soil related bodies and International Organisations

World Soil Day: 5th December

      Newsletter
Highlights
School Material (Awareness Raising activities)
(12/07/10) By introducing soil science into the school curriculum from an early age it is possible to use ‘hands-on’ activities to explore and explain basic soil characteristics and functions such as: the different textures soil have - feel tests; what organisms live in soils - composting and growing plants; soils in the garden ..... more....

Download the Soil Atlas of the Northern Circumpolar Region
(30/06/10) The Soil Atlas of the Northern Circumpolar Region is also available for download. Atlas pages are to be downloaded individually (144 pages in total), either in PDF format (higher quality) or JPEG format. ....more......

Soil, Climate Change and Biodiversity – Where do we stand?
(15/06/10) The Environment Directorate-General and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission will host a high-level conference on 'Soil, climate change and biodiversity: where do we stand?' in Brussels on 23-24 September 2010.....more......

Renewable Energy Directive (support)
(11/06/10) Climatic Zone Available Data Layers for Commission Decision of [11 June 2010] on guidelines for the calculation of land carbon stocks for the purpose ..... Download data

SPADE/M Version 2 Database
(21/05/10) The measured profiles provided by SPADE-1 in the form of separate spreadsheets have been assembled in a structured Access Database. The updated version of SPADE/M is called SPADE/M v2 and incorporates a number of significant changes ....Download it......

Site Specific Land Management; General Concepts and Applications
(21/05/10) This report explains in brief a general concept and principle of this eco-friendly farming approach with some common procedures to be followed while planning of SSLM in any area ..... Download it

Soil Atlas of the Northern Circumpolar Region
(06/05/10) Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, launched the Atlas on 4th May 2010 in Brussels at the European Parliament at the inauguration of an exhibition on the work of the Commission's Joint Research Centre ....more......

10 New Publications in International Journals
(27/04/10) 10 Articles in various peer review journals: Science, Geoderma, European Journal of Soil Science, Soil Use and Management, Soil Biology and Biochemistry, Earth-Science Reviews, Journal of Environmental Monitoring, .... more .....

Data Update and Model Revision for Soil Profile Analytical Database of Europe of Measured Parameters (SPADE/M2)
(26/04/10) The Soil Profile Analytical Database of Europe of Measured parameters (SPADE/M) is part of the distribution package of the Soil Geographic Database of Eurasia (SGDBE). To make the original data more generally available the profiles were added to the existing database... Download it

Case Study - Italy, Sustainable Agriculture and Soil Conservation
(26/04/10) Ten case studies were carried out in Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom between spring and summer 2008.... Download it

Free Download of the pH data
(31/03/10) The JRC created a quantitative map of estimated soil pH values across Europe from a compilation of 12,333 soil pH measurements from 11 different sources.... more

   

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European Commission - Joint Research Centre
Institute for Environment and Sustainability
Contacts:
Marc Van Liedekerke(tel. +39-0332-785179)
Panos Panagos (tel. +39-0332-785574)