A SOIL INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR MALTA

A few days ago, the project MALSIS, a Soil Information System for the Maltese Islands, was selected and approved for co-funding by the LIFE Third Countries EU Commission. The total expenditure of the project amounts to 639,950 Euro, of which the EC contribution is 378,000 Euro, or 60 per cent of the total. The beneficiary of the project, the Ministry for Agriculture and Fisheries, will contribute towards the other 40 per cent of the costs, that is 261,950 Euro.

The birth of the MALSIS project goes back to 1999, when the Director General (Agriculture), Mr Franco Serracino-Inglott, recommended the submission of a project proposal for a soil survey of Maltese soils under the LIFE third countries EU funding programme.

The project is scheduled to start shortly, and is planned to run over a two-year period. This project will be implemented by the Centre for Agricultural Development and Research within the Ministry for Agriculture and Fisheries, in collaboration with the National Soil Research Institute of Cranfield University, UK. The Technical Director of the project is Mr George Carbone, Chief Scientific Officer, while the project manager is Ms Sonya Vella, Scientific Officer.

The MALSIS project aims to provide easy access to detailed information about the soil environment. The driving force for harmonised soil-information is an ever-increasing demand from decision-makers, planning regulators, environmental managers, agriculturists and civil engineers.

Methodology and Deliverables

The project will involve a soil survey of Malta and Gozo, and soil analyses that are to be conducted at the Agricultural Chemistry Laboratory.

The project consists of six successive implementation phases to achieve the following results:

• a digital soil property database, held and manipulated in computer-compatible form.
• A computer-based information system (MALSIS), addressing the agro-environmental obligations of the acquis.
• A Maltese national soils office, with fully trained surveyors, laboratory analysts and information scientists.

The MALSIS project will contribute towards human resources development, because by the end of the two-year project, the team members will have received sufficient training to make a fuller contribution within the agricultural and environmental sectors in Malta. The Agricultural Chemistry Laboratory will form the National Soil Office. Dissemination and training will take place in three distinct components: workshops, staff training and public information. Two workshops will be held during the two-year MALSIS project, at the end of each year.