National Soil Resources Institute
The National Soil Resources Institute is a well established centre within the Department of Environmental Science and Technology. It leads Cranfield's research on soil and soil science, specifically by:
- Understanding the physical, chemical and biological processes that make up Soil Systems and that provide capacity for soil-based ecosystem services
- Developing Spatial Geosciences techniques such as digital soil mapping and pedometric methods to represent thematic soil characteristics
- Creating, maintaining and exploiting resource inventories and monitoring systems with Soil Spatial Informatics
- Describing processes that expose or protect soils from threats (e.g. organic matter loss, erosion, contamination, compaction, loss of biodiversity and sealing), and developing policy and better technology for Soil and Land Management in both rural and urban areas. This includes work on sports surfaces, as well as the application of engineering design and evaluation methods to improve the performance of off-road vehicles, construction equipment and agricultural machines.
The National Soil Resources Institute contributes strongly to research which is led by other centres in the Department, particularly:
- Soil management as a part of integrated land and water management
- Spatial description of ecosystem functions and natural capital as inputs to spatial planning in rural and urban landscapes
- Land resources monitoring
For details of soil maps and reports, Soil Site Reports and digital soil data and for access to our interactive Soilscapes map please refer to LandIS, the 'Land Information System'.
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