Soils

Subject of the collection

EAD Established the soil archiving facility/ Soil Sample Bank to support the implementation of the soil quality monitoring program and provide vital information on changes in soil quality over time after benchmarking with the best soil archiving facilities in the world

 Offering both time- and cost-efficient soil sampling, the facility currently stocks 7,000 preserved soil samples available to relevant stakeholders for research purposes. The archiving facility has the capacity to store more than 25,000 soil samples under controlled optimal conditions to preserve their scientific value. The facility receives more than 600 soil samples annually from the soil quality monitoring programme

Samples stored date back to 2009. All samples are managed through a geospatial database and linked to EAD environmental database. EAD is committed to ensure that archived samples and their data are available for public research both now and in the future. EAD is utilizing the stored samples to create the region’s first soil spectral library

Requests for access to samples can be made by organizations, including but not limited to universities, academic research organizations, commercial research organizations, government agencies, non-governmental departmental bodies (or equivalent) and local authorities. Unfortunately, EAD is unable to accept requests from individuals not conducting scientific study and/or research for or on behalf of an organisation

These samples serve as a time capsule for the information held by soil samples for future scientists and researchers

The facility is considered a scientific wealth. Based on a scientific paper published by the US Soil archiving facility

Sample request

Parties requesting physical soil samples should submit an official request to EAD /soil quality section with a clear objective for the required sample, quantity, types of analysis to be conducted, duration of the holding of the sample, etc. EAD receives the request, and the soil section makes the decision for approval of providing the samples.If there is a possibility of overlap with other investigators or other groups who are working on related topics EAD may put the applicant in touch with these groups

Return of data

Applicants (author or researcher) must return an electronic/digital copy of all data generated from use of the samples along with derived variables and descriptions of these variables, including supporting data on QA/QC procedures, analytical procedures and instrumentation used, no later than six (6) months following the end of the project

Acknowledgements in publications

All publications emanating from use of the ADSAF have to be sent to EAD in advance of publication for approval no later than two (2) months prior to the proposed publication date. EAD welcomes early engagement with any researcher on all publications in development, prior to submission and approval. All publications arising from use of the ADSAF are read to ensure that they do not breach any data protection requirements, have used methods and produced results that are sound and defensible and correctly and adequately describe the procedures used to collect the original samples. EAD provides feedback to authors where it feels this may be helpful.

Intellectual property

The intellectual property related to the use of ADSAF samples in the study will be governed by the following principles:

• Intellectual property of the ADSAF samples is owned by EAD;
• Results arising from the study making use of the ADSAF samples shall be owned by the party generating them;
• EAD shall be granted a license to use any results for non-commercial research and teaching purposes.

Confidentiality

Any information provided by applicants in connection with an application to use the ADSAF will be treated in confidence and shall not released to third parties. Data sharing is subject to the data sharing agreement in EAD