Global Soil Data Manager - sub-Saharan Africa (GSDM - SSA)Global Soil Data Manager - sub-Saharan Africa (GSDM - SSA)

John Mutua, Kristin Piikki & Mats SöderströmJohn Mutua, Kristin Piikki & Mats Söderström

AfricaGIS 2019 Conference, Kigali, RwandaAfricaGIS 2019 Conference, Kigali, Rwanda

19 November, 201919 November, 2019

Visualizing soil data is exciting to many actors inagriculture and land use planning.

Previously, one would have to travel to the �eld tocollect soil samples and send them to the lab foranalysis

Image credit: [Neil Palmer]

Background

But, recently, several global digital soil maps have been developed and published.

Global digital soil mapsDigital maps save the time (travel, carry soils samples to the lab and wait for results) before making crucial site-speci�cdecisions.

These maps are useful in guiding actors in the agricultural sector in making decisions at a country level.

However, they may not be useful guiding farmers in small areas or speci�c locations e.g. watershed area

Site-speci�c crop management is the fundamentalbasis for sustainable intensi�cation of cropproduction.

For ef�cient agronomic inputs application, decisionsrelated to types and rates of these inputs, should bebased on local conditions.

Else products may be applied –and wasted– wherethey are not needed

Site-speci�c agriculture

Local soil mapsIt is important to evaluate global soil maps before use and if needed improve the accuracy by using local soil data.

Availability

Spatial resolution

Accuracy

Alt 1

1. Read article;

2. Download data;

3. Install software;

4. Carry out the analyses;

Dif�culty : ****

Alt 2

1. Use GSDM - SSA *;

Dif�culty : **

Translating science to practiceThere are two options here...

[*] Not convinced? See next slide.

Sub-Saharan Africa Soil Data Manager (SSA-SDM) http://gsdm.ciat.cgiar.orgA tool for translating food security policies into practice;

Provides open data as decision support for site-speci�c management decisions;

Built using Free and open-source software (FOSS).

Soil Sampling Local map adaptation

Available tools

System availabilityCountries;

Counties;

Villages;

Fields;

SSA region.

Local useFertilizer companies wishing to supply the right fertilizer blend to local needs (which depends on soil types/properties);

Authorities for designing programmes for sustainable intensi�cation, such as subsidies of lime in areas with low pH;

Extension of�cers who want to generate risk maps of nutrient de�ciencies in districts or regions;

Individual farmers or groups of farmers who want to make well founded decisions on input investments.

Key takeawaysDiversify your communication

Scienti�c articles are suitable for scientists but a application/tools may be better to reach practitioners;

A web / smartphone tool can have added bene�ts

GSDM - SSA can be used as a collaboration platform and spark new collaborations and projects.

How can you contributeUse the application http://gsdm.ciat.cgiar.org/

Report use cases through ciat-gsdm@cgiar.org

File issues/ report a bug when using the R packages

https://github.com/soilmapper/mapsRinteractive

https://github.com/soilmapper/SurfaceTortoise

Feature requests

Pull request

Funding Sources

Formas/SIDA (contract: 220-2013-1975);

Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ; contract: 81206681);

Västra Götaland Region;

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (contract: RUN 2018-00141).

It formed part of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE).

Thank you!