PacSoP development

A long-standing collaboration

For decades, soil scientists from Manaaki Whenua have been visiting Pacific Island countries and territories to collect soil samples and map soil patterns. This work is vital to help decision-makers improve their soils knowledge and land management practices.

Showcasing the Pacific Soils Portal to representatives and decision makers from PICTs

Soil mapping in the Pacific comes with significant challenges. In particular, islands are often remote, populations are small, financial resources and expertise are very limited, and through emigration of highly trained people institutional strengthening is often short-lived, requiring rebuilding to leverage past development work. 

The New Zealand government has had a long history of supporting soil and land resources research in the Pacific funding technical assistance to Pacific Island countries, through:

  • soil surveys,
  • soil analysis (chemistry, physics, mineralogy),
  • soil characterisation,
  • soil classification,
  • soil fertility analysis,
  • agronomic studies,
  • soil interpretation for land use,
  • technology applications of soils data, and
  • training for national and regional staff working in soils and agricultural research.

The work has been mainly conducted in the southwest Pacific – the Cook Islands, Fiji, Niue, Tonga, and Western Samoa.

 

Publication

History of soil research conducted by the NZ Soil Bureau in five SW Pacific countries

History of soil research conducted by the New Zealand Soil Bureau in five southwest Pacific countries provides a detailed and important overview of a wide range of soil surveys, research activities and other project initiatives undertaken by NZ in these countries and includes a comprehensive bibliography.

This history was painstakingly compiled and written by David Leslie, who was closely involved himself in soil activities in each country as a
researcher and later as a leader.
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History of the PacSoP

The Pacific Soil Portal is a regional effort to collate and make available information, knowledge and advice relating to soils more readily available to a wide variety of soil and land users. 

This initiative started as a collaboration between Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research (MWLR) and the Pacific Community’s Land Resources Division (SPC-LRD) and was endorsed by the Heads of Government Departments from 23 Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) at Heads of Agriculture and Forestry Services. 

More recently it was supported by the Pacific Soil Partnership which united New Zealand, Australia, and 15 PICTs as a regional node of the FAO Global Soil Partnership.

This support lead to a 3-year project “Soil management for resilient agriculture in Pacific Islands” funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), lead by CSIRO with collaborators from MWLR, SPC-LRD and five PICTs (Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati and Tuvalu) that included funding to develop and release the Pacific Soils Portal.

It currently brings together soil data, dating back to the 1960s, for six Pacific countries – Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

Publication

Record of significant soil and land resources research in the South West Pacific

This report by Dave M. Leslie establishes an inventory of the soil and related research in the Pacific supported by New Zealand over the last 70 years. This inventory is invaluable because soil and related agronomic research underpins the development of sustainable livelihoods in most Pacific countries.

Without this inventory, there is high risk that details of the research would be lost through loss of institutional memory due to institutional change, staff turnover, retirements and loss of data within both Pacific and New Zealand organisations. This document helps to minimise the impact of those
factors.
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