Enhance the quantity and quality of soil data and information: data collection (generation), analysis, validation, reporting, monitoring and integration with other disciplines

Pillar Four of the GSP essentially addresses the development of an enduring and authoritative global system to monitor and forecast the condition of the Earth’s soil resources. 

This global soil information system has three primary functions:

1. Answering critical questions at the global scale (e.g. is there enough arable land with suitable soil to feed the world?)
2. Providing the global context for more local decisions (e.g. transnational aspects of food security and degradation of natural resources)
3. Supplying fundamental soil data for understanding Earth-system processes to enable management of the major natural resource issues facing the world (e.g. climate change, food security, biodiversity loss). These data need to be comparable with other fundamental data sets including those for weather, climate, net primary productivity, biodiversity, land cover and geology.

The network of International Soil Information Institutions (INSII) forms the backbone of Pillar 4 and is supported by a technical working group of soil information experts (Pillar 4 Working Group). Among other tasks, this working group elaborates additional guidance for developing soil data products, which build on existing and new national and other local soil information. The implementation plan contains the Terms of Reference (ToR) for each governance element.

Chair: Luca Montanarella (European Commission)

Facilitator: Yusuf Yigini (GSP Secretariat)

  Africa: Christian Omuto (Kenya)

  Asia: Yiyi Sulaeman (Indonesia)

  Europe:  Maria Fantappiè (Italy) / Eurasia: Iurii Rozloga (Moldova)

 Latin America and the Caribbean: Mario Guevara Santamaria (Mexico)

  Near East and North Africa: Rachid Moussadek (Morocco)

  North America: Bert VandenBygaart (Canada)

 South West Pacific: David Medyckyi-Scott (New Zealand) 

Pillar 5 representative: Rainer Baritz (European Environment Agency)
SDF representative: Rik van den Bosch (The Netherlands)
ITPS representative: Costanza Calzolari (Italy)
IUSS Global Soil Map Working Group Representative: Dominique Arrouays (France)