Farewell, Timothy S.

Hallett, Stephen H.

Keay, Caroline A.

Younas, Adnan

English

Cranfield CERES

            Quarterly Progress Report 1st January – 31st March 2011  Report Prepared for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Report of Activity for LandIS Support   2      Report of Activity for LandIS Support For the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs   by Caroline Keay, Timothy Farewell, Adnan Younas  and Stephen Hallett    Quarterly Progress Report 1st Jan– 31st Mar 2011 DEFRA Contract No.  SP1608 NSRI Contract No. WN32151N        RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS DOCUMENT Please contact: Caroline Keay National Soil Resource Institute, Cranfield University Email: c.keay@cranfield.ac.uk Tel: 01234 750111 ext 2771  CHANGE HISTORY Version Date  Summary of change 1.0  6/4/2011 First Issue     Reference to this report should be made as follows: KEAY, C.A.; FAREWELL, T.S.; YOUNAS, A., HALLETT, S.H; (2011).  Report of Activity for LandIS Support for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Quarterly Progress Report Jan – Mar, 2011, NSRI research report number WN32151N for DEFRA, 8pp.  National Soil Resource Institute Bullock Building, Cranfield University, Bedford, MK43 0AL, UK Tel: 01234 750111 ext 2771 E-mail: nsri@cranfield.ac.uk   Webs: www.cranfield.ac.uk/sas/nsri/  www.landis.org.uk   3  Progress with the LandIS Support Contract Reporting Period: 1 January, 2011 – 31 March, 2011 Adjustment to the LandIS Contract This document represents the second milestone for the LandIS Support contract SP1608. The funding for this contract was adjusted at the request of Defra on 28th January 2011 to defer a proportion of the budgeted staff time forward until next fiscal year (11/12). The Budgeted staff days have been adjusted accordingly in the LandIS Personnel/Time section of this report. Update of LandIS Agreement Schedule 1 & 2 The LandIS agreement signed in 1997 and updated in 2003 lists the datasets in LandIS which are covered by the agreement. Over the intervening years these datasets have been modified and substantially renamed and therefore a new schedule was written which shows the current name of the original datasets and identifies new data which has been added to LandIS on subsequent Defra projects. This revised Schedule was sent to Defra on 3rd February 2011 and we are awaiting a notice of acceptance from Defra. Database Maintenance No specific maintenance issues are reported in this period. The LandIS „Virtual Server‟ continues to provide good service to the project. The service team in the Cranfield University IT computing group provides a high standard of maintenance care and support. An upgrade of the Oracle RDBMS and ArcSDE platform has been planned for summer of this year. Web Tools Usage The Soilscapes Viewer is widely used. We are planning a redevelopment of the tool and have accordingly placed a series of requests for feedback from users onto pages associated with the tool. We will collate such comments received and factor these into our design plans.  The Soil Site Reporter (http://www.landis.org.uk/reports/) continues to be used extensively with numbers steadily increasing. In the current period there have been 22 new organisations and 195 new users registered. These include 3 new Universities and 143 new student registrations.   The following figures illustrate the level of response and use of the reporter to-date (figure 1):   4   Figure 1 Summary of Soil Site Reporter uptake by user group Improved Data Descriptions Work has continued on the preparation of promotional literature for a wide range of LandIS products, designed to allow users to gain a better understanding of the types of information that is available to them through the LandIS datasets. These information sheets include descriptions of the datasets, their uses and applications and illustrative photographs and maps. Informal metadata is also included in these documents, while INSPIRE compliant ISO19115/19139 metadata is available through the Geonetwork metadata server.  These promotional brochures will be available for download in „pdf‟ format in the near future on the LandIS website. Equivalent literature for approximately 17 datasets is currently under development, and these will also be placed online when they are complete.  Datasets for which promotional brochures are currently being prepared:  Soilscapes Drainage Landcover Habitats Fertility Texture Treefit National Soil Map Soil Corrosivity Ground Movement Hydrology (HOST) Mechanical Rectification Natural Regeneration Susceptibility to compaction Susceptibility of topsoil slaking Topsoil Texture Wetness Class  5  SoilML Caroline Keay attended a workshop (funded by the EU GS-Soil project) in Hanover, Germany. This workshop was to discuss the testing of the currently evolving data standard ISO28258 specifically designed for soil data exchange. Sample SoilML XML-/XSD files were prepared as part of this exercise demonstrating how Auger Bore data collected during the national soil map programme could be transferred using this protocol. This required the creation of schema description files specific to the auger bore data defining all of the attributes and the range of acceptable values for each. LandIS Website Improvements The LandIS website has undergone a series of technical improvements to improve its stability and performance. Files from the legacy website are to be removed from the server and folders restructured. The website news section has been updated. CEH Meeting Stephen Hallett recently attended by invitation a meeting hosted by Defra concerning the CEH/BGS initiative „InformaTec Soils‟. Stephen was able to represent the LandIS system and its holdings at this meeting and discussed positive ways to contribute to this initiative. At the time of writing the report of the day is not circulated, however one potential means to progress is to see LandIS soils metadata passed to a newly announced soils portal. EIONET Stephen Hallett has also been planning a response to the EIONET request for information for select soils data to be made available to the EU Joint Research Commission (JRC). Information is sough concerning soil organic carbon and erosion risk on a gridded basis.  6  LandIS PERSONNEL/TIME  Time put down to the LandIS project for the period Oct 2010 to Mar 2011 with budgeted days for Year 1 of the LandIS contract (Oct 2010-Mar 2011) in brackets: Staff   Time Budgeted Days  Caroline Keay  21 (21) days Stephen Hallett 2 (2) days Timothy Farewell  30 (30) days Adnan Younas 1.5 (1) days  Sara Larman   27 (30) days Ian Truckell   1 (1) days Bob Jones  0 (0) days Jacqueline Hannam 0 (0) days   Defra Data Lease budget used between 1st October 2010 and 30th March 2011  £1,375 has been spent from the total project budget of £3,120 allocated for Defra projects for this quarter. New data leases this quarter have been highlighted in the tables below as “*NEW*”. 7 COMPLETE LIST OF DATA LEASES FUNDED BY DEFRA VIA THE LANDIS FUND (OCT 2010 – MAR 2011) Organisation Abstract Purpose of Use Start Date End Date P&A Uncharged Royalty Data Lease funded by DEFRA via the LandIS fund World Conservation Monitoring Centre UNEP NATMAPvector, NATMAPsoilscapes, NATMAP1000 HORIZONfundamentals & hydraulics,  NSItopsoil 1 (carbon), NSItopsoil 2 (carbon  Consortium Licence use by: R. H.Young - Nottingham University. & I.Bateman -UEA. UK National Ecosystem Assessment- Project code 0126. (original licence L0013/00552 Defra) 09-Mar-09 31-Mar-11 £975 £239,040 *NEW* Defra and the Welsh Assembly Government 1. Wetness class: map showing soil associations in which more than 65% of the association area comprises soils having wetness class IV, V or VI. 2. Maps (with associated shape files) of shallow, stony, coarse, fine textured and peat soils. We would supply determining Less Favoured Areas in England and Wales. Consortium licence in conjunction with Natural England ref: LC0013/008 and  Welsh Assembly Government ref: LC0200/001 01-DEC-10 30-NOV-14 £400 £618,500     TOTAL (Defra) £1375 £857,540   8   Organisation Abstract Purpose of Use Start Date End Date P&A Uncharged Royalty Bona Fide Research University of Lancaster NSI topsoil data, (including that modified by Pat Bellamy), Ecosse Soil  Carbon Dataset . Also outline of England and Wales. Soil carbon management in UK -  PhD research by D. Dennis Konadu 01-Oct-10 01-Oct-13 £375 £12,432 University of Aberdeen & University of Reading NATMAPvector for England and Wales Examining NVC Community Type Change with climate change. Consortium Licence with Geoff Griffiths (Reading)  and Pete Smith (Aberdeen) For use on Defra Priority Habitats, Protected Sites and Climate Change: DEFRA CR0439 01-Oct-10 01-Oct-11 £975 £75,000 *NEW*  Cranfield University For the 10km sheet TL04 around Wilstead: NATMAP Vector plus an extract from sheet 147 Luton & Bedford. PhD thesis on 'Site-specific land management of cereal crops based on proximal soil sensing' 16-MAR-11 28-MAR-11 £0 £225    TOTAL (Crown and Bona fide Research) £1,350 £87,657   

Report of Activity for LandIS Support Quarterly Progress Report 1st Jan - 31st Mar 2011

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