ИСТИНА

The Plan of Action as part of FAO Global Soil Partnership developed for the creation of distributed International Network of Soil Information Institutes (INSII). It is supposed to use the experience, gained in such international projects as INSPIRE and GlobalSoilMap, and such basic principles as distributed accumulation of soil data at the locations with best maintenance, information interchanging based on a "response on demand" principles, and ensuring the compatibility of the soil data using harmonization algorithms for all kinds of soil data. The structure and operation of National Soil Information Institutes is not specified at the FAO program, and depends on the peculiar properties of each country. Specifity of Russia consists of wide variety of natural zones presented on its vast territory. Well-organized structure of 110 regional offices of the Ministry of agriculture operates more than 50 years. The soil fertility monitoring observations are conducted regularly. Despite of standard set of soil properties analytical measurements, there are difficulties in harmonization of soil information associated with used methods and data format presentation. This may be due to use different soil classifications and different techniques of soil sampling. The present work describes the structure and principles of functioning of the National Network of Regional Soil Information Institutions (NNRSII), based on the principles set out for INSII. The scheme of organization and functioning of RSII composing from several organizations is created and tested for several agricultural regions of Russia. The main generator and the accumulator of soil information (points, profiles) is regional agrochemical center. Local agricultural universities and research institutes generate vectorized legacy maps, processing algorithms for remote sensing data, pedotransfer functions and grids. One of these organizations should also play the role of soil data aggregator and harmonizer for the National Soil Spatial Data Infrastructure Centre (NSSDIC).