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Published online 13 January 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.17

News

Digital soil map for Africa launched

Map will help farmers to improve crop production.

Natasha Gilbert

Soil scientists are developing the first ever digital soil map of Africa, covering 42 countries south of the Sahara. The map will provide up-to-date information on the health and properties of the soil, helping farmers and policymakers to improve degraded soils and increase crop production.

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  • Digital soil mapping is a very prominent and promising field of research, and Europe is currently involved in this field of investigation. The precision and the accuracy of the maps produced, until now, is however still very low. The most realistic use of these maps will be the application of provisional model or the support to land use planning at regional scale, and not the base of information for the agronomic management at farm scale. The weakest point of the proposed approach is the use of 60 sites, to validate the entire Africa (except Sahara), that is comparable to the validation of a soil map of Europe with 10 sampling sites. No farmer can trust on these data. It would be better to use the existing information, in terms of soil profiles and related analysis, and the existing maps instead. In Europe, for instance, there are several Universities, Research Centers, NGO?s, holding tens of soil profile data each. Ciro Gardi

    • 22 Jan, 2009
    • Posted by: Ciro Gardi