Data management for monitoring forest soils in Europe for the Biosoil project

Growing environmental awareness and advances in modelling have generated interest in soil monitoring networks. Data management tools have to be developed in order to store data, check for errors and retrieve data for sharing and for analysis. As a result, we have designed a web application and a database for the Biosoil project that focuses on European forest soils. Integral to the system are authentication of users and access rights to the modules and data. It also logs all activities of each user. During data submission, the system automatically manages data transfer from the flat file (ASCII file) to the database after compliance checks. Then error tracking is followed by automated expert checks. These checks identify potential mistakes that can be corrected or commented on by data providers. The database is intended to cope with the challenges of transnational monitoring and integrates data quality assurance/quality control mechanisms. Benefits from the architecture of the database and from the services provided by the software may be generalized to all soil monitoring databases in order to improve data management and quality control.