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Alfred Hartemink, Ph.D., is a soil scientist with the International Soil Reference and Information Centre in Wageningen, The Netherlands. He is affiliated with Wageningen University. He is also Deputy Secretary General of the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS) and coordinator of GlobalSoilMap.net.

During his visit to Morgantown, Hartemink will meet with scholars from WVU’s National Geospatial Development Center and with local Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS). He will also present two seminars, which are free and open to the public.

He will speak on “Trends and development in scientific publishing” at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, April 23. At 3:30 p.m. Thursday, he will present “A soil science renaissance and GlobalSoilMap.net.” Both seminars will be presented in 1001 Agricultural Sciences Building on WVU’s Evansdale Campus.

GlobalSoilMap.net is an initiative to make a new digital soil map of the world that will be freely available, web-accessible, and widely distributed and used. It involves a consortium of scientists from around the world, and is supported by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. GlobalSoilMap.net will provide accurate, up-to-date, and spatial referenced soil information to land owners, policymakers, and scientists.

Hartemink’s visit is being hosted by the NGDC, housed in the Division of Plant and Soil Sciences in WVU’s Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry and Consumer Sciences.

The NGDC is a collaboration between the WVU and the NRCS. The mission of the NGDC is to enhance NRCS capacity to produce, utilize, and apply soil, natural resource, and conservation information through the innovative application of geospatial technologies. The NGDC works closely with NRCS staff at field, state, and national offices, other federal agencies, university researchers, and the private sector to achieve these goals.

Presentation abstracts:

“Trends and development in scientific publishing”

• Despite the great importance of publications for individual careers as well as the prestige of research centers and universities, there seems to be little discussion in the soil and environmental science community on this subject – this as opposed to some other disciplines where lively debates are held on the pros and cons of the present “publish or perish” culture. In this talk Hartemink will sketch historical developments, current trends and future outlook in scientific publishing. The purported roles of publishing, the flow of e-paper, papers per researcher, authorship and its problems, readability of papers, society and commercial journals, open access journal, impact factors and the h index, fraud and access will all be discussed and as far as possible trends are analyzed quantitatively. Hartemink will also offer ten rules for writing better papers.

“A soil science renaissance and GlobalSoilMap.net”

• Renewed interest in agriculture (food, feed, fuel) has brought soils back on the global research agenda. Soil erosion, nutrient depletion and pollution are key issues in recent reports by UN and other international organizations. The need for up-to-date and fine resolution soil information and the revival of soil research is highlighted and prioritized in some of these studies. There is also an increased interest for soils in the popular press and media, and soils have entered the policy arena. For the global soil science community, there are challenges ahead. There is a set of novel techniques and methodologies at the doorstep waiting to be applied and there is a direct need to educate a new generation of soil scientists. A new global has recently been launched names GlobalSoilMap.net that aims to make a new digital soil map of the world using state-of-the-art and emerging technologies for soil mapping and predicting soil properties. A global consortium has been formed that includes the US Department of Agriculture – Natural Resources Conservation Service (Morgantown, USA).