Irish Soil Information System

Materials & Methods

The Irish Soil Information System project will uniquely combine the latest spatial mapping technologies with tried-and-tested ground-truthing: soil pits, at a national scale. Using existing historical data from the An Foras Talúntais soil survey from the 1960s, 70s and 80s, which surveyed 44% of the country. This project will seek to map the remaining half of the country by generating predictive soil maps based on satellite imagery, digital terrain mapping, and other geo-environmental GIS layers. It will then proceed to calibrate and verify these models through an intensive 2.5 year traditional field sampling campaign from 2010 to 2012; this campaign will provide hard soils data on 300 new reference profiles.

It is hoped that this project will form the basis for more accurate soil data in Ireland at a national scale and will provide to the public, data which to date has not been accessible. This will provide the opportunity for soil specific nutrient advice and better research opportunities in spatial soil mapping and modelling in the future.