Soil Monitoring Software (SMS)

Besides various human activities, soil is vulnerable to natural processes and challenged by climate change impacts such as in particular drought and floods. Systems based on historical data and using cutting-edge technology, such as GIS and remote sensing, can help local authorities to better understand the extent of the problem. A web-based application tool was developed through the SoilPro project to be applied in Mediterranean ecosystems for soil monitoring and protection scopes. Monitoring activities are crucial to evaluate the soil degradation conditions and to define restoration and adaptation strategies with the aim of reduce drought and floods risks, in particular in the Mediterranean degraded lands. A web-based application tool (Soil Monitoring Software - SMS) was developed for the identification and assessment of areas at risk of soil degradation due to climate (i.e. drought and floods) and human pressures. The tool has also the potential to evaluate management strategies that could be proposed as adaptation and protection actions. Indeed, the identification of the land degradation problem in early stage provides sufficient time to policy makers to intervene by implementing low cost policies and strategies. The SMS is based on the open source GRASS GIS software and takes advantage of its functionalities, delivering them over the Web. SMS's architecture is modular. The basic modules include the data handling module, the data repository, soil management – monitoring modules and mapping module. There are two types of data that can be handled in SMS: raw grid data (initial or produced) in raster format and map image data (georeferenced images). Also, punctual data (coming from direct measures and historical dataset) can be uploaded into the SMS to produce maps of areas at risk of soil degradation. The SMS is available in the SoilPro project website, together with the manual and examples of the software application.