Data for land decisions

In October, during the Digital Soil Mapping (DSM) workshop in Ethiopia, we piloted an online training platform hosted by ISRIC - World Soil Information. This platform will allow those unable to attend in person to complete or review the training materials at their convenience. The platform enriched the training experience, offering access to various teaching tools in one centralised location, allowing attendees to follow along on their screens in a more engaging and effective learning experience.

Although some fine-tuning is needed, we believe the online learning platform can greatly improve knowledge sharing and training accessibility.

Last year the German Space Agency (DLR) began using ScMap to produce innovative Sentinel-2 derived, 20m resolution, products for soil property mapping. This year, we tested the mean reflectance and standard-deviation products as covariates for digital soil mapping. In most tests, these covariates improved soil property map accuracy. DLR also provided bare surface and vegetation masks and a bare surface reflectance composite, crucial for modelling in partially vegetated areas by isolating bare surface data from vegetation. The details will follow - a scientific paper is in the works at DLR.

From 7-11 October 2024, the LSC-IS project team conducted a five-day training on Digital Soil Mapping (DSM) at the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR). The training covered key aspects of DSM, including data preparation, spatial modelling using machine learning, and the application of automated tools like the DSM workflow developed by ISRIC.

From 5 to 9 August 2024, ISRIC - World Soil Information and the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) organised and facilitated a five-day training on Digital Soil Mapping (DSM) in Naivasha, Kenya. The workshop was designed to help participants utilise DSM for improved decision-making and agricultural practices in Kenya .

A three-day LSC-IS Digital Soil Mapping (DSM) products workshop was recently held by project team members from ISRIC - World Soil Information and Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB) in Huye, Rwanda. The workshop focused on evaluating suitable datasets in conjunction with soil survey and science experts.

The Land, Soil, and Crop Information Services for Climate-Smart Agriculture in Africa project will be presented at the Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit in Kenya on 7-9 May 2024. On 8 May, the LSC-IS team will present at the side event ‘Monitoring soil health and soil health investments at different scales’, organised by the European Commission, ISRIC, and CIFOR-ICRAF. The LSC-IS presentation, led by Dr. Michael Okoti from the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), will focus on national soil information systems.

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Donors and partners of the LSC-IS project have recently visited project sites in Taita Taveta County, Kenya, to monitor the progress made through their support.

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Twenty-two participants provided feedback on Ethiopia’s LSC hub prototype for further improvement and development during a national workshop in Adama, Ethiopia.

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The Land Soil and Crop (LSC) Hubs project implemented a new user-friendly design for the LSC hub based on feedback obtained during the WP4 stakeholders meetings. This improved design was first implemented in Kenya and will soon be available for the hubs in Rwanda and Ethiopia. Improvements in design will continue to be developed in the near future after processing more feedback from users.

View new design

The Land Soil and Crop (LSC) Hubs project organised two sub-national workshops in early February of this year as a counterpart to the national workshop held in Nairobi in December 2023. The four-day workshops occurred in Voi, Taita Taveta county, and Busia, Busia county.

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A two-day workshop was recently held in Voi, Tiata Taveta county, Kenya. The LSC-IS Kenya team worked with local infomediaries and stakeholders in mapping soil, water and cropping challenges faced in the region. The team also crafted concrete visions for its future landscapes. They explored what information could be drawn from the LSC-IS hub to cater to the actions needed to achieve said visions and whether that information was sufficient for Taita Taveta’s context.

The Land, Soil, and Crop Information Services (LSC-IS) to support Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) project organised a national workshop in Kenya on 18-19 December 2023. 30 participants received hands-on training on how to access Kenya’s LSC hub and how to use the information contained in the hub.

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From 11-14, December, members of Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), the Kenya Department of Remote Sensing and Resource Surveys, the Kenya Forest Service and the Kenya Met Department came together at a data management training led by ISRIC - World Soil Information as part of the Land Soil Crop Hubs (LSC Hubs) project.

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From November 21-23, 2023 the project carried out training on digital soil mapping in Musanze, Rwanda. Project team members from ISRIC - World Soil Information delivered the training to Rwandan professionals with most coming from LSC Hubs project partner Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB). The focus was joint development of a new set of high-resolution digital soil maps of Rwanda.

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The Land, Soil, and Crop Information Services (LSC-IS) to support Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) project organised a national workshop in Rwanda from 30 November to 1 December 2023.

The workshop, hosted by Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB), was coordinated by the International Livestock Research Institute and supported by the staff of ISRIC - World Soil Information, Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation (WCDI), Wageningen Environmental Research, World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA) and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

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Mr. Francois Uwumukiza, from the Embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands in Rwanda says: ‘Our transformation journey is still long but having a functional Information hub is a first step towards farmers accessing information, and data. The hub requires the commitment of all relevant government officials to make sure that it is functional for farmers by encouraging its use, maintaining it, and entering data regularly so farmers can benefit.’

The Land Soil Crop Hub prototypes that were developed for use in Kenya, Ethiopia and Rwanda are now in the iterative process of national-level partners, especially KALRO and RAB, shaping the user experience. The hub design is evolving based on their input. The beta version of the LSC hub will be released by the end of 2023.

Based on project partner feedback, a mapviewer was created to visualize and compare various land, soil and crop maps. This first version of the mapviewer contains soil maps created in this project, and spatial data available from the LSC data catalogue. The mapviewer will be futher developed based on input from project partners.

In this five-minute video, ISRIC - World Soil Information project coordinator Thaisa van der Woude introduces the Land Soil Crop Hubs (LSC Hubs) prototype.

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‘…[the] research is novel in that it goes beyond mapping only basic soil properties but extends this to more complex soil properties, such as the root zone plant available water holding capacity. This is highly relevant information for farmers and land managers,’ explained Prof. dr. Gerard Heuvelink.

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Behind the scenes on a data and information hub, the catalogue is the principal component of the platform’s architecture.

Learn about the development of the LSC Hubs catalogue prototype.

The land, soil and crop (LSC) Hubs are easy-to-access online platforms, managed by the Ethiopia Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organisation (KALRO) and Rwanda Agriculture Board (RAB), enabling stakeholders to access information on soil, crops, land and climate such as data, maps and advisory services.

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German Space Agency (DLR) has begun their work with Land Soil Crop Hubs, incorporating Earth Observation inputs (e.g. satellite and remote sensing data) to provide the project with innovative soil mapping methodologies. Preliminary products will be available for review later this year. Check back for an update!

The two pilot regions for LSC Hubs in Ethiopia are Basona Worena and Adami Tulu Jido Kombolcha.

On 18 May 2023, LSC Hubs project team presented a session at the ASARECA Agriculture Ministerial Conference in Uganda titled: Land, Soil, Crop Information Services for Climate-Resilient Food Systems in Africa. The presentation reached 15 Ministires of Agriculture in East and Central Africa.

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A series of consultation workshops was held in Rwanda at national and regional levels during November 2022. They served to identify the needs and demands among stakeholders in the country with regards to land, soil and crop information. Read more

Land Soil Crop Hubs (LSC Hubs) project partners gathered in Wageningen, The Netherlands from May 9 - 13, 2023 for the ‘Annual Project Meeting’. Partners travelled from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda to be present and the group followed an interactive program to dig in on the next steps for each of the project’s work packages.

Read more about the meeting.

The two districts of focus in Rwanda for piloting the information services are:

• Musanze
• Rwamagana

A delegation from the Land Soil Crop Hubs project will present at the ASARECA Agriculture Ministerial Conference in Uganda from 17-19 May, 2023. Read more

In January 2023, two regional level workshops were organised in Ethiopia, in:

• Batu (Ziway) and
• Basona Werena

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ISRIC and KALRO met from 17-20 January 2023 in Nairobi to:

• assess technical capacity (human, software, hardware) to operate, maintain and use the hub;
• understand current portals/apps/tools developed by KALRO that support agricultural decision-making;
• initiate discussions about the architectural design for Kenya’s LSC Hub.

The technical capacity assessment showed that the KALRO IT team is a good team with highly diverse skills.

John Mlamba, Director Climate Change and Environment - County Government of Taita-Taveta (picture by ASARECA) says:

“Taita Taveta County (Kenya) was the food basket for the coastal region, which is not the case anymore because of over-cultivation and soil degradation. This project is a great opportunity for us to provide the farmers with sound information on soil to improve our agriculture”.

During the January 2023 meeting of the KALRO and ISRIC teams, a draft plan was created that focuses on catalogue service. Catalogue service is the main element of an LSC Hub that provides FAIR data management functionality to the land, soil and crop datasets available at KALRO.

• Date: 23-31 January 2023
• Participants: 60

Policymakers and agricultural experts highlighted the urgent need to expand data-driven decisionmaking, to help Ethiopian agriculture cater to the country’s food and nutrition needs amid climate change and land degradation. Read more

• Date: 13-14 October 2022
• Participants: 48

The two days’ stakeholder workshop in Taita-Taveta County outlined the importance of engaging with county level and engaging local level stakeholders in making their needs regarding data availability and access explicit. “Engaging the end-users in the LSC hub design makes this project different” was mentioned during the evaluation of the workshop.

• Date: 27-28 September 2022
• Participants: 41

The outcome of the two days’ stakeholder workshop in Busia County was a set of clearly defined user requirements and needs that guide the design of the LSC-hub in Kenya

• Date: 19-20 September 2022
• Participants: 41

Some quotes of the workshop included: “Many different actors and stakeholder group have been part of this workshop with space and time for open conversation - both formally and informally”. “We have to unfortunately underline that important data simply do not reach farmers”. “If farmers want to obtain data they generally have to pay a -not small- amount in KSh!” Read more

Based on the criteria presented below, two-counties were chosen i.e. Busia and Taita Taveta. The selection of pilot counties in Kenya has been based on: 1. Representation of various agro-ecological zones; 2. GDP per-capita that is lower than national average though has potential for agricultural development; 3. Potential for agricultural production. 4. Characterised by diverse farming systems. 5. Climate risk profile available 6. Presence of other projects that can complement and synergise with DeSIRA LCS-IS. 7. Security and ease of project implementation.

Elizabeth Okosa, KALRO (Picture by ASARECA)

“Most of the data used to understand and improve agricultural practices is static, heterogeneous, and not timely hence, difficult for farmers to apply it to improve their agricultural practices”. (Elizabeth Okosa, KALRO). This project works with the conviction that land, soil and crop information services can help to improve the efficacy of CSA related policies, plans and practices.