Soil Projects > ECALP(Ecopedol. Map of Alps) > Technical Regulations
Selection of pilot areas
Pilot areas will be proposed by the partners of the project and will be chosen in agreement among all involved subjects, in order to satisfy as much as possible some requirements. In detail the areas should possibly:
- be representative of the alpine environment for the own territory;
- be located near the national border, possibly where landscapes are similar to those of the neighbouring partner, in order to allow comparison;
- have available soil data, with at least soil survey standard at 1:250.000 scale, equal to about 30 observations for the entire pilot area, half of which should be profiles (1 observation every 6.25 km2)
Areas which have already been studied for application purposes, will be favoured, especially if the issues concern the main ones highlighted by the Alpine Convention and the Communication of the European Commission of 04/16/2002 “Towards a thematic strategy for soil protection (erosion, decreasing of organic matter, pollution, etc.)
In order to improve correlation work, mapping by pixel is suggested. This kind
of format allows an easy flow of data on soil, which can be easily integrated
by other environmental and territorial information (see the French example INDIQUASOL
http://gissol.orleans.inra.fr/programme/bdiqs/bdiqs.php).
According to INSPIRE’s principles (INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation
in Europe, http://inspire.jrc.it) which
aims at availability of harmonized geographic information and is promoted by
the European Union, a reference grid, which will soon become the European standard,
should be used. The pixel size for pilot areas has been set to 1 km, according
to Eurogrid/INSPIRE; this size seems to be the most suitable, considering both
the extent of the entire alpine region and the probable high diversity in data
availability among partners. Nevertheless, for those partners who consider it
advisable, due to local peculiarities, it should be possible to use smaller
pixels (100 m or 10 m side, according to Eurogrid/INSPIRE). In any case, the
common reference, proposed for the start of this testing remains the 1 km side
pixel.
Filling in of the exchange format in each pilot area
Since the European Soil 1:1.000.000 Database is the only available example
of a harmonized database for the entire alpine territory, its structure has
been taken as a reference point in order to develop an exchange format which
could be shared among all partners. Furthermore, the “Manual of Procedures
for a Georeferenced Soil Database for Europe” (see /ESDB_Archive/eusoils_docs/doc.html),
has been used for variable coding and to integrate some aspects lacking in the
1:1.000.000 database.
The information required in the exchange format is organized into information
about environment, about soils and about soil horizons. For the environment
the required data concern climate, morphometry, morphology, geology, land use
and vegetation, while for soils, some information on the quality of data is
required (number of profiles and confidence level), but also data about parent
material, WRB classification, hydrological properties (permeability, drainage
and AWC) should be provided. Horizons should be grouped into maximum three layers
(topsoil, subsoil, substrate), for which the main features should be described,
such as texture, rock fragments, bulk density, organic carbon, carbonates, reaction,
cation exchange capacity and base saturation. It is also very important to provide,
at every level, information about procedures and data sources (metadata).
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