IUSS Alert - 33 (Janary 2008)
Information for and from the global soil science community
Happy New Year!
As we begin a new year, I send you best wishes for a happy and successful 2008! This is a busy year. February will see the formal launch of the International Year of Planet Earth; in July the Inter Congress Council Meeting will take place in Brisbane; late August is the time for the Eurosoil meeting in Vienna. We shall also join with other GeoScience unions to participate in the International Geological Congress in Oslo in early August and at the EGU in Vienna. There are numerous national meetings together with Commission and Working Group meetings. I hope you continue to enjoy working with soils and letting others know about the fascinating insights into our world provided by our knowledge and understanding of the soil and soil systems.
Election of IUSS Division and Commission Officers
During December I circulated to National Societies the list of candidates for the elections of IUSS Division and Commission Officers, together with short biographies. The election period runs from January 1, 2008 to March 1, 2008 - the list of candidates and their biographies is on the IUSS website under IUSS PEOPLE. Each IUSS member is entitled to vote in their National ballot which is to be organised by the National Soil Science Society or National Academy of Science. Each of you should be invited to participate in a ballot either by submitting a ballot paper or by participating in an electronic ballot. If you are not invited to vote please contact your National Soil Science Society and copy the message to me at
Stephen Nortcliff
Secretary General, IUSS
WOCAT in Google Earth
All case studies from the WOCAT database can now be viewed in Google Earth A WOCAT logo is displayed for countries with case studies described; smaller 'clickable' WOCAT icons indicating the location of individual case studies will appear when zooming in closer. World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) is a project coordinated by the University of Bern, ISRIC and FAO in collaboration with many institutions worldwide. WOCAT aims to promote sustainable land management into land use systems world-wide by offering a tool for standardized documentation and evaluation of SLM technologies and approaches. WOCAT has so far collected comprehensive information on over 180 technologies and 110 approaches from - 40 countries. For more information contact: or
New issue of Pedometron
A new issue (number 23) is available from the www.pedometrics.org and www.iuss.org In this issue there are reports on Pedometrics 2007, Markov Chain random fields, geostatistical bibliometrics, pyrometrie, profiles, Alex's preferred papers and a new Pedomathemagica and quiz to keep your brain cells working. The Newsletter is prepared by the IUSS officers Dr Budiman Minasny and Dr Murray Lark. As always with Pedometron: Happy reading!
Free Software
LMMpro is a new software program for regression analysis of the Langmuir Equation and the Michaelis-Menten Equation. It comes with three embedded data sets that are sufficient for most teaching objectives about regression techniques. The embedded data sets help you teach about the impact of data errors, the impact of regression choice, and the impact of slight theory errors. You can also show your students the impact of using few data versus lots of data by selecting which data points to use in the regressions. The program uses 7 regression techniques, 5 linear and 2 non-linear, and it is easy to see how they differ from each other and compliment each other. It is a FREE download: http://alfisol.com/IFS/IFS-003/LMMpro-Downloads.php
IUSS Alerts are e-mailed to more than 12,000 people in over 100 countries. If you have information to share please send it to Please forward the IUSS Alerts to your friends and colleagues.