Soil Science - Meeting Societal Needs and Challenges: The International Perspective.

International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS) cordially congratulates the 75^th anniversary of SSSA. Globally climate change, food and energy securities and environmental contamination are hot issues commonly to countries and people. Causes and results of such issues are directly related to soil and the mitigation measures of such causes are in soil. Thus scopes and roles of soil science in future are largely expanding. These endow soil scientists with responsibility to cope with an explosion of information and knowledge in many scientific fields. Increases in scope of soil science present an ever-increasing demand for the multidisciplinary collaboration from diverse fields. To meet the societal needs in soil science nationally and globally, the new paradigm for research and education needs to be set to decide the directions and prioritize the stakeholders’ needs. Soil science should outsource the emerging science and technology from other fields. Global partnership and communication among societies, technology transfer and financial investment from developed countries to underdeveloped should be facilitated to fulfill the goals of soil science. Ecosystem services and multifunctionality of soil should be integrated into the categories of soil science for the environmental health and human well-being. A new horizon should be made for education of younger generation on soil to be an asset for the soil science societies. With these perspectives, IUSS as the global union of soil scientists will set the strategic plans for the next decade to meet the upcoming challenges in soil science in order to serve global soil science communities with fostering all fields of soil sciences and giving support to soil scientists in the pursuit of their activities.