Submission for poster presentation at BSPM2017

Building a Public Repository of Open Soil Iron Data for Brazil

Alessandro Samuel-Rosa1, Ricardo S. D. Dalmolin1, Paulo I. Gubiani1,
Stanley R. M. Oliveira2, Humberto G. Santos3, Eloi Ribeiro4
1
Federal University of Santa Maria, Post-Graduate Program in Soil Science, Santa Maria-RS, Brazil
2
Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, National Agricultural Information Technology Research
Center, Campinas-SP, Brazil
3
Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, National Center of Soil Research, Rio de Janeiro-RJ, Brazil
4
ISRIC World Soil Information, Wageningen-GE, the Netherlands
Presenting author email: alessandrosamuel@mail.ufsm.br

We have recently stimulated the emergence of an unprecedented collaborative effort among

soil scientists from all over Brazil. The goal: to build a centralized, public and free repository of
standardized and georeferenced soil iron data with national coverage. Many Brazilian soil
scientists have already shared datasets, some of them even before we could insert the
datasets in possession of our institutions in what we called the Brazilian Soil Iron Data
Repository (Fe-BR, ufsm.br/febr). Since December 2016, Fe-BR already has some 26 thousand
records from about 300 datasets, most of them from the Brazilian Soil Information System
maintained by Embrapa (bdsolos.cnptia.embrapa.br). Along this period, we have seen that soil
scientists are eager to share the datasets in their possession but are very sensitive to the extra
efforts needed to do so. As such, we have designed a system that relies on data manipulation
tools that are well known to all -- spreadsheets. We also aimed at a suite of tools that meets
the basic technological requirements of a robust but flexible data repository -- version control,
persistent identification, multiple file export options, concurrent edition, reviewing tools. The
free online service Google Sheets has been able to fulfil all of these requirements. With Google
Sheets, datasets in Fe-BR can be reviewed and/or augmented at any time by anyone on the
internet with the permission to do so. This participatory approach can potentially boost the
development of a completely new type of community driven, free and open soil data
repository. There has obviously been some difficulties, such as (1) motivating authors to
provide comprehensive metadata and adhere to standards, (2) guessing spatial coordinates of
non-georeferenced soil observations, (3) establishing communication between data sources,
and (4) finding people willing to help in data organization and standardization. Solutions for (3)
usually increase the need for more collaborators thus inflating (4). Solving (1) seems to depend
upon consistent and persistent awareness raising. Fortunately the enthusiasm and sense of
public responsibility of soil scientists, and availability of free online collaborative mapping
services such as Google Maps, have made it easier to solve (2). Next steps include launching a
metadata catalog with search tools and improving the febr package for R (github.com/samuel-
rosa/febr). Soil scientists are encouraged to use Fe-BR data to improve taxonomic systems,
evaluate analytical methods, produce soil maps, identify priority areas for sampling and so on.