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Stakeholders and synergies of the global soil information system
CSIRO AGRICULTURE & FOOD
Neil McKenzie ITPS Southwest Pacific RepresentativeCSIRO Australia
OverviewGetting our own house in order
• Purpose: don’t stray from the global focus• Strategy: ensure mutual benefit for all INSII members• Regain momentum: let’s learn from past successes and failures• Implementation: establish the core teams now
The global soil challenge
We need a 75% increase in food production by 2050 with severe constraints:
• finite arable land• yield plateaux for major crops • increasing cost of energy, nutrients
and emissions• soil degradation• water scarcity in key regions• biodiversity decline
Current systems of land use are being disrupted by a changing climate
Why do we need a distinct global soil information system?
To answer critical questions at the global scale• How much arable land will be available in coming
decades? • How much food and fiber can it produce? • Where are rates of soil change affecting ecosystem
services? To provide the global context for local decisions
• Most urban people are protected from local resource depletion.
• The soil and water used to support them is scattered all over the planet.
• How do land use decisions in one district, country or region have consequences elsewhere?
To supply a fundamental data set for understanding Earth-system processes
• What are the stores and fluxes of water, carbon, and nutrients?
Priority outputs
• Consistent set of data products– global grid of soil functional properties– global map of soil and land types (polygons)– primary data from soil profiles (i.e. direct measurements)
• Monitoring system– Flexible design– Implementation in priority regions– Addition of SoilStat to the FAO statistical system
• Synthesis, forecasting and interpretation– Regular reports on global soil condition – Supply of information to global reporting mechanisms– Diverse information products available online
People, systems and governance
• The global soil information system requires a significant investment and a major technical effort – synergies will not emerge through voluntary mechanisms
• Critical need for a governance structure that is:– based on a model of partnership and mutual benefit– representative – transparent– committed to scientific and technical excellence
• Essential to establish an international project team with responsibility for delivering Pillar 4
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Mutual benefitWhat should INSII members expect?• Adoption of information standards will save costs and avoid
duplication• Adoption of information standards will provide easier access to
third-party tools (e.g. simulation models, mobile apps)• Training and capability development delivered via Pillar Four will
strengthen national and local soil information delivery • Easier access to the international scientific community and their
technologies (e.g. best practices for digital soil mapping) • International assessments of soil resources for your jurisdiction
will be based on the best available data• Better national decision-making due to the improved context and
better global data sets
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Case studyA decade of lessons from GlobalSoilMap• A program that aimed to apply
digital soil mapping globally• Computationally ambitious but
tractable at the continental and global scale
• Consensus on the minimum data set• A focus on meeting the needs of
disciplines wanting to estimate fluxes, stores and transformations of water, carbon and nutrients
• A test run for Pillar Four that we all need to understand
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Advances in Agronomy Volume 125 (2014)
Enduring and consistent ideas
• The final global product had to be based on the best available data.
• The spatial resolution had to be compatible with other global data sets (e.g. terrain, hydrology, land cover, and land use).
• Soil functional properties relating to water, carbon and nutrients were the priority.
• Every estimate for a soil property had to have an accompanying estimate of uncertainty.
• An enduring and easy-to-update soil information system with online access had to be built rather than a one-off product.
• The methods had to respect the sovereignty of nations.
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Traps and controversies avoided
• Specify the final output rather than how to get there
• The Technical Specifications were not strongly aligned with a specific national or regional approach
• Agreed to focus on the minimum data set rather than an optimal data set
• The use of depth functions avoided complex and intractable issues
• Despite complaints about slow progress, the GlobalSoilMap community steadily produced innovations, breakthroughs and new products
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Make room for diverse approaches
KSS Brisbane 26th October 2016 | Neil McKenzie11 |
Governance
• Relatively simple memorandum of understanding
• Established a flexible regional model that influenced the early days of the GSP
• Voluntary and not intended to bind parties if major funds became available
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Problems of ‘light governance’
• Lack of clarity and transparency within the consortium with regard to decision making
• Vulnerable to dysfunction in some institutions at critical times
• Confusion over the research versus operational aspects of the project – most members were pursuing research objectives
• Unintended message that the Consortium was a club rather than an open entity
• Inconsistent statements on what GlobalSoilMap would achieve
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Other observations
• The Global Financial Crisis came at the wrong time
• Loss of momentum caused by attempts to integrate the project within the Global Soil Partnership
• The timetable was ambitious and remained unchanged even when funds didn’t appear
• A few countries now have a very useful grid-based coverage
• The new global grids from ISRIC emerged from the effort
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www.csiro.au/soil-and-landscape-grid
Priorities for INSII (1)
• Work towards greater clarity of purpose and focus on the global issues
• Ensure greater openness and transparency of governance and fully engage with our stakeholders
• Ensure there is an operational rather than a research focus
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Priorities for INSII (2)
• Make sure we involve the best people and their teams from around the world
• Commit to a culture of collaboration and excellence in everything we do because culture is more powerful than strategy
• Establish the ‘Global Soil Spatial Data Information Centre’, secure sufficient funds, and change the name
• Make the INSII meetings unmissable
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Thank you
Neil McKenzie
Chief Research Scientist
CSIRO Agriculture and Food
Canberra, Australia
t +61 2 6246 4222e [email protected]