Earth Observation: spotlight on important projects - e-SOTER

Soil and terrain information is needed for many interpretations for example in the field of agriculture, environment, watershed management, infrastructure, etc. but available data are often inaccessible, incomplete, or out of date. The Group on Earth Observations - GEO plans a Global Earth Observing System and, within this framework, the e-SOTER project addresses the felt need for a global soil and terrain database. As the European contribution to a Global Soil Observing System, it will deliver a web-based regional pilot platform with data, methodologies, and applications, using remote sensing to validate, augment and extend existing data.

As the European contribution to a Global Soil Observing System, e-SOTER will create a web-based regional pilot platform to deliver soil information that can be used directly by policy makers and managers; it will also make available the methods and techniques that have been used to create the information.

The project e-SOTER is a collaborative research  project of 14 partners in Europe, China and Morocco, with European Union funding through the FP7 mechanism.