On 19 June in Svēte Elementary School (Jelgava District) a training session will be held on application of the digital soil map of the parishes of Svēte (Jelgava District) and Nīca (Liepāja District). The digital soil map for both parishes is developed within the framework of the UN Development Programme, Global Environment Facility, the state enterprise "Vides projekti" and the Ministry of Environment project "Building Capacity for Implementation of the "UN Convention To Combat Desertification / Land Degradation" in Latvia".

The digital soil map scaled 1:10 000 is made on the basis of the paper format soil map of the agricultural lands, deposited with the State Land Service. The paper format map is digitalized and enhanced by means of information from other state institutions – data on the quality value of the land, locations of mineral deposits, information on the Quaternary deposits, terrain declivity data, high-risk flooded areas, contaminated and potentially contaminated sites, agricultural territories of national importance, water catchment areas, hydrologic network, agricultural land territories (field blocks), amelioration systems, cadastral borders and types of land exploitation.

All this territory descriptive data are stored in various institutions of Latvia, as State Land Service, Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Agency, Rural Support Service, etc. Such a dispersed information storage causes essential difficulties for taking routine and long-term decisions both by municipal and state administrative bodies, holding up also research activities.
Within the project framework data on the parishes of Svēte and Nīca, being the project pilot territories where agrochemical soil research has been done, are compiled in a common data base as separate data layers of the digital map. The maps for the project are developed by the professionals of the company “Envirotech” Ltd.

The delegate of the developers, Mr.Aivars Tērauds, will present the structure of the digital map, options offered therein and practical use of it to the representatives of all the involved state, municipal and research institutions. The digital map will be tested by all the state institutions, having participated in its creation, as well as by the Parish Councils of Svēte and Nīca and by research institutions – the Latvia University of Agriculture, the Faculty of Geography and Land Research of the University of Latvia.
It is planned that further debate of all the involved organizations will take place in autumn, in order to discuss options of developing common national land information system, applying the principles implemented in the developed sample data base.

Additional information:
Aija Jakubovska
Education and Communication Component Coordinator, UN DP/GEF project "Building Sustainable Capacity and Ownership to Implement the objectives of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in Latvia"
+ 371 2 914 4371
Aija.Jakubovska@biosfera.gov.lv