Combined forest and soil management after a catastrophic event

At the end of October 2018,a storm of unprecedented strength severely damaged the forests of the eastern sector of the Italian Alps.The affected forest area covers 42,500 ha.The president of one of the damaged regions asked for help from the University of Padua.After eight months of discussion,the authors of this article wrote a consensus text.The sometimes asper debate brought to light some crucial aspects:1)even experienced specialists may have various opinions based on scientific knowledge that lead to conflicting proposals for action.For some of them there is evidence that to restore a destroyed natural environment it is more judicious to do nothing;2)the soil corresponds to a living structure and every ecosystem’s management should be based on it;3)faced with a catastrophe,people and politicians find themselves unarmed,also because they rarely have the scientific background to understand natural processes.Yet politicians are the only persons who make the key decisions that drive the economy in play and therefore determine the near future of our planet.This article is an attempt to respond directly to the governor of a region who formally and prudently asked a university department called"Land,Environment,Agriculture and Forestry"for help before taking decisions;4)the authors also propose an artistic interpretation of facts(uncontrolled storm)and conclusions(listen to the soil).Briefly,the authors identify the soil as an indispensable source for the renewal of the destroyed forest,give indications on how to prepare a map of the soils of the damaged region,and suggest to anchor on this soil map a series of silvicultural and soil management actions that will promote the soil conservation and the faster recovery of the natural dynamic stability and resilience.

The contribution of the European Society for Soil Conservation (ESSC) to scientific knowledge, education and sustainability

Soil is an integral component of the global environmental system which supports the quality and diversity of terrestrial life on Earth.Therefore,it is vital to consider the processes and impacts of soil degradation on society,especially on the provision of environmental goods and services,including food security and climate change mitigation and adaptation.Scientific societies devoted to soil science play significant roles in reducing soil degradation and promoting soil conservation by advancing scientificknowledge,education and environmental sustainability.The ESSC was founded on 4 November 1988,with the aims to:1.Support research on soil degradation,soil protection and soil and water conservation.2.Provide a network for the exchange of knowledge about soil degradation processes and soil conservation research and practises.3.Produce publications on major issues relating to soil degradation and soil and water conservation.4.Advise regulators and policy-makers on soil issues,especially soil degradation,protection and conservation.The societal challenges that can be addressed through better soil protection,advancing knowledge and scientific approaches to soil protection and sustainable management,mean the ESSC embraces the on-going development,application,review and constructive criticism of highly innovative scientific soil conservation methods,In this context,the ESSC analyses and publicizes the roles and functions of soil in natural and human-modified systems and the functional optimization of soils to ensure sustainable environmental protection.'The thin layer of soil that forms a patchy covering over the continents controls our awn existence and that of every other animal of the land' (Rachel Carson (1962) in'Silent Spring).

Exposing vocabularies for soil as Linked Open Data

Standards to describe soil properties are well established,with many ISO specifications and a few international thesauri available for specific applications.Besides,in recent years,the European directive on "Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community(INSPIRE)"has brought together most of the existing standards into a well defined model.However,the adoption of these standards so far has not reached the level of semantic interoperability,defined in the paper,which would facilitate the building of data services that reuse and combine data from different sources.This paper reviews standards for describing soil data and reports on the work done within the EC funded agINFRA project to apply Linked Data technologies to existing standards and data in order to improve the interoperability of soil datasets.The main result of this work is twofold.First,an RDF vocabulary for soil concepts based on the UML INSPIRE model was published.Second,a KOS(Knowledge Organization System)for soil data was published and mapped to existing relevant KOS,based on the analysis of the SISI database of the CREA of Italy.This work also has a methodological value,in that it proposes and applies a methodology to standardize metadata used in local scientific databases,a very common situation in the scientific domain.Finally,this work aims at contributing towards a wider adoption of the INSPIRE directive,by providing an RDF version of it.