Practical Issues of An Overarching Soil Classification in Europe.

The diversity of national soil classification systems in Europe, with their own terminology, classes and analytical procedures, hampers sustainable soil management at European level. The Soil Map of the European Communities at  1 : 1 000 000 of 1985 used a derivate of the FAO-UNESCO Legend of the Soil Map of the World to portray the distribution of soils in Europe in a unified manner. Since then, the FAO Revised Legend and its successor, the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB), has been used to further build an information base on European soil resources.
WRB is a framework for soil classification and correlation world-wide, permitting precise recording of readily recognizable soil properties. However, is WRB a suitable system to delineate soil characteristics that are essential for managing and safeguarding European soil? Although the current stratification in WRB 2006, with its prefix and suffix system of qualifiers for the 32 Reference Soil Groups recognized, provides a lot of information at soil profile level, much of that information does not show when WRB is used for mapping, especially at small scales, because of the generalization needed to construct map and legend. Moreover, transferability of soil information contained in previously used systems is limited because of changing concepts and definitions.  The paper with discuss practical issues at European scales.