National Soil Information System
The project of "National Geographic Soil Productivity and Organic Carbon (TOK) Information Management System (UTF/TUR/057/TUR)", supported by FAO with the budget of more than one million, carried out by Soil, Fertilizer and Water Resources Central Research Institute between 2012-2015. Within the scope of the project; in addition to determining and mapping in the geographic database some physical (EC, pH, texture, lime), and chemical (total N, eP, eK OM, eCa, eMg, eMn, eZn, eFe) soil characteristics of agricultural areas of Turkey, 'Organic Carbon Distribution Maps' (%) and 'Carbon Budget Map of Turkey's Soils' (t/ha) has been prepared.
Accessibility of the coordinated (spatial) Turkey soil data at national level via internet, providing different stakeholders with these data's through authorization and roles assigned, improving data standards, satisfying thematic mapping requirements, updating coordinated soil database system of our institutes and to traceability studies are very important subjects. Thus, in order to share coordinated data on internet the "Terrestrial Soil Information System" WEB PORTAL was created integrated with the existing Geographical Information Systems of Soil, Fertilizer and Water Resources Central Research Institute. In this context, the infrastructure of the Geographical Information Systems has been established as open source database working on 3 layer architecture and supporting WCS, WMS, WFS service standards which are defined by OGC.
In the first place, mainly the carbon distribution (%) and carbon budget map of Turkey soils, pH, salinity (EC), soluble phosphorus (P2O5 kg/da), lime (%), soluble potassium (K2O kg/da), KDK and texture maps were created. These maps have been opened to access on the "Terrestrial Soil Information System" portal through official website of the Soil, Fertilizer and Water Resources Central Research Institute (http://arastirma.tarim.gov.tr/toprakgubre).
The infrastructure of these maps developed by our institute in such a way that it can be reached through the "Agricultural Information System" of MFAL.
This portal will provide access to the soil database and maps those most important resources of planning of land management of Turkey.
The data collected and to be updated on a regular basis, will be used in the creation of soil maps, in the agriculture-, forestry- and pasture plans, in the modeling of environmental impacts, in different engineering branches and in the planning and conservation of integrated natural resources.
