Ecosystem Services Databank and Visualisation for Terrestrial Informatics

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Our project will allow researchers and students at Cranfield University, together with our research partners and collaborators, the opportunity to access, share and interact with a broad range of natural resource, soil and land-related materials gathered from around the world which are held in Cranfield's 'World Soil Survey Archive and Catalogue', WOSSAC (www.wossac.com).Cranfield University's Department of Environmental Sciences and Technology is active and innovative in developing and applying systems approaches to soils, landscape ecology, biodiversity and ecosystem goods and services. As part of its integrative approach, Cranfield University has collected and catalogued the 'World Soil Survey Archive and Catalogue' (WOSSAC) over the last decade. This is a continually expanding collection comprising over 23,000 catalogued paper documents, maps and other materials relating to soils and land resources in about 300 territories worldwide. The material is complex, diverse and some of it is physically fragile. It includes much rare grey literature and, for many items, WOSSAC holds the only available copy. This project will provide the means necessary to enable capture of these materials in digital form and the pathways to make these materials available for access by researchers and interested stakeholders.Our environmental research also leads us to consider the physical, chemical and biological processes at work in the soil and land system. Important to this is developing our shared understanding of changes that may occur due to natural and anthropogenic processes, and their impact and consequence. Our project will enable the capture and visual representation of these processes in three dimensions through dedicated 3D scanning and visualisation equipment. The visualisation suite, with its specialised visualisation software designed for the geosciences, will provide the tools for exploration of multi-dimensional 'big data' as well as new and powerful means to convey results and analyses, and to communicate risk and uncertainty to potential beneficiaries of research.Appropriate computing facilities will also be put in place to permit the storage and dissemination of these materials to research collaborators and interested stakeholders.