UC3/US4 Human factor in soil salinity analyses and reporting in Italy

[pvgenuchten]

User story

As an operator at an appointed official research institute for reporting in Italy,

I want to discuss, optimize and establish with stakeholders common operations on distinguishing natural versus anthropogenic salinity

So that I can report to EEA on salinity on behalf of Italy following the requirements of the Directive on Soil Monitoring and Resilience

Background

I am national authority for Italy (ISPRA) responsible for the implementation and reporting of the Soil Monitoring Law indicator on salinity. I’m interacting with the public institution holding the national soil database (CREA) and with several regional authorities, which also hold relevant information both on soil and on soil management and which act in the promotion of the policies for soil protection at regional scale. My institution (ISPRA) holds and maintains the national catalogue of public data on environment state; therefore, we both have expertise in GIS technologies, and we have IT-personnel, managing the catalogue, repository and web-portal. My main target group is the European Commission, to which I have to produce reporting documents and maps, but indirectly the target groups are also the farmers who are applying the improved soil management practices foreseen in the regional policies. I have a soil science background, also because I interact within the national Soil Hub network of institutions holding soil knowledge.

This user story encompasses the following aspects:

• Knowledge discovery: is there a prescribed (policy) or accepted (science) procedure to distinguish between natural and irrigation induced salinity? (eg literature, handbooks, procedures, standards, policy, somewhere else) -> resource library (procedures/tools)
• Data discovery and retrieval of the relevant data sources (to allow analysis on one location) -> Discovery via a catalogue
• Ontology; are there a prescribed or accepted ontology to facilitate harmonisation of diverse sources -> resource library
• Facilitate in the harmonisation of diverse sources to a common ontology -> guidance, tooling
• What is the network of experts working on this at the same time (and who can have information on the procedures) -> Networking forum/mailing list/community of practice

Member states are typically keen on running evaluations locally and report outcomes, central tooling could be available to support a subset of the member states, the result can be downloaded and submitted to responsible entities.

[chlebas]

The user story must be more focus on the interaction with the SoilWise repository. The information is described in the background and not in the user story itself.