Reliable and up-to-date soil information is fundamental to guide policies and decisions in the light of challenges facing food security, climate change adaptation and mitigation, further provision of ecosystem services and sustainable intensification of agriculture. This report reviews the present availability of soil information from legacy maps and reports, and from ongoing global Digital Soil Mapping efforts. It examines soil maps and soil profile databases at the global and national level, global datasets, regional and (inter)-continental soil information products, and the continental soil atlas. It also looks at the evolution of methods and tools for soil mapping, and reviews the requirements of soil information users through survey assessment. Currently, the soil science community is limited in its capacity to provide accurate and updated information to different soil users. This report concludes that there is an urgent need for traditional soil survey/mapping and DSM communities to join forces to fill this gap and meet users' expectations for soil information.

GlobalSoilMap: Basis of the global spatial soil information system contains contributions that were presented at the 1st GlobalSoilMap conference, held 7-9 October 2013 in Orléans, France. These contributions demonstrate the latest developments in the GlobalSoilMap project and digital soil mapping technology for which the ultimate aim is to produce a high resolution digital spatial soil information system of selected soil properties and their uncertainties for the entire world. GlobalSoilMap: Basis of the global spatial soil information system aims to stimulate capacity building and new incentives to develop full GlobalSoilMap products in all parts of the world.

GlobalSoilMap: Basis of the global spatial soil information system contains contributions that were presented at the 1st GlobalSoilMap conference, held 7-9 October 2013 in Orl‘s, France. These contributions demonstrate the latest developments in the GlobalSoilMap project and digital soil mapping technology for which the ultimate aim is to produce a

This book contains papers presented at the 6th Global Workshop on Digital Soil Mapping, held 11-14 November 2014 at the Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences of Nanjing, China. Digital soil mapping is advancing on different fronts at different paces throughout the world. The researches and applications on DSM are moving from method development to realizations in different scales and regions, serving the generation of national and continental to global soil grids. Meanwhile, new ideas and insights on mapping complex soil-landscapes such as flat plains,anthropogenically altered agriculture and urban spaces are emerging, with the help of new paradigms and models.The goal of the sixth workshop was to review and discuss the state of the art in digital soil mapping, and to explore strategies for bridging research, production, and environmental applications. This book provides a very useful and comprehensive overview of the status of digital soil mapping, in which graduate students, scientists and specialists working within the field of geography can find the spatial prediction approaches and related theory.

Soil degradation is real and global, even if the evidence is not so easy to glean. Degradation poses comparable risks to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and nonhuman animal extinctions. Few have noticed soil degradation as the problem it has become, except most indigenous peoples in their struggles for survival.

Signi?cant technological advances have been few and far between in the past approximately one hundred years of soil survey activities. Perhaps one of the most innovative techniques in the history of soil survey was the introduction of aerial photographs as base maps for ?eld mapping, which replaced the conventional base map laboriously prepared by planetable and alidade. Such a relatively simple idea by today’s standards revolutionized soil surveys by vastly increasing the accuracy and ef?ciently. Yet, even this innovative approach did not gain universal acceptance immediately and was hampered by a lack of aerial coverage of the world, funds to cover the costs, and in some cases a reluctance by some soil mappers and cartog- phers to change. Digital Soil Mapping (DSM), which is already being used and tested by groups of dedicated and innovative pedologists, is perhaps the next great advancement in delivering soil survey information. However, like many new technologies, it too has yet to gain universal acceptance and is hampered by ignorance on the part of some pedologists and other scientists. DSM is a spatial soil information system created by numerical models that - count for the spatial and temporal variations of soil properties based on soil - formation and related environmental variables (Lagacheric and McBratney, 2007).

Dokuchaev carried out most of his research in Ukraine. His student and friend, Volodymyr Vernadsky, went on to create trans-disciplinary environmental sciences and the concept of Earth as a living organism, famously taken up by James Lovelock. That spring of ideas still flows and the researches captured in this volume are relevant to present-day problems, and not only in Ukraine. Soils have always been under stress but, in the Anthropocene, mankind is in the driving seat. As a sequel to Soil Science Working for a Living: Applications of soil science to present-day problems, we consider issues of policy as well as soil genesis, attributes and functions in various environments, natural and man-made. We consider human impacts on the soil cover through its use and misuse, highlight methods of research and assessment of soil quality, and the threats of soil degradation. The distinguished contributors also describe and propose various options for evaluation and remediation of degraded soils, drawing on the latest methods of modelling and cartography as well as long-term field experiments and long experience. The book will be invaluable to researchers and practitioners in soil science including graduate and post-graduate education, academics and professionals.