On 19 June in Svēte primary school (Jelgava district) training was organized to apply soil digital mapping of two parishes: Svēte (Jelgava district) and Nīca (Liepāja district). The mapping was carried out within the framework of the UNDP, Global Environment Facility and Republic of Latvia Ministry of Environment project Ensuring capacity of Latvia for implementation of UN Convention to combat desertification/land degradation.

The digital soil map with a scale of 1:10 000 was developed on the basis of a paper format soil map of agricultural lands used by the Latvian State Land Service. The existing paper format soil map was digitalised and supplemented with information provided by several public sector institutions: land quality value, locations of natural mineral deposits, quarter? sediments, slope decline data of the relief, elevated risk flooding areas, polluted and potentially polluted areas, agricultural areas of national importance, water catchment areas, hydrological networks, farming areas, drainage systems, registered land boundaries and types of the land use. The above information on the area is located among different government bodies, e.g.,
State Land Service, Latvian Environment Geology and Meteorology Agency, Rural Support Service, etc and this fragmentation of information encumbers both routine and long-term decision making on the local community and national level, as well as research work.

For the purposes of the project on land degradation, the Svēte and Nīca parishes were involved as pilot territories and agrochemical studies of the soil were carried out and aggregated in a joint data base as separate digital map data layers. The maps were prepared by experts of the company SIA Envirotech. During the seminar on 19 June, Aivars Tērauds, the representative of mapping experts demonstrated the digital map to representatives of the involved institutions, local communities and research institutions and showed how the map could be applied in their daily work. The completed digital map will be accessible to the government institutions taking part in its elaboration, as well as to the local governments of Svēte and Nīca, as well the research institutions: Latvian Agricultural University, Faculty of Geography and Land Sciences of the Latvian University.

The next discussion on this topic is planned for the fall addressing the issue of setting up a joint national land information system on the basis of principles applied to the completed data base sample.

Aija Jakubovska
UNDP/GEF Project Building Sustainable Capacity and Ownership to Implement UNCCD objectives in Latvia
Coordinator
Education and Communication Component
+ 371 2 914 4371
Aija.Jakubovska@biosfera.gov.lv