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Traditional agricultural extension services rely on extension workers, especially in countries with large agricultural areas. In order to increase adoption of sustainable agriculture, the recommendations given by such services must be adapted to local conditions and be provided in a timely manner. The AgroTutor mobile application was built to provide highly specific and timely agricultural recommendations to farmers across Mexico and complement the work of extension agents. At the same time, AgroTutor provides direct contributions to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, either by advancing their implementation or providing local data systems to measure and monitor specific indicators such as the proportion of agricultural area under productive and sustainable agriculture. The application is freely available and allows farmers to geo-locate and register plots and the crops grown there, using the phone’s in-built GPS, or alternatively, on top of very high-resolution imagery. Once a crop and some basic data such as planting date and cultivar type have been registered, the app provides targeted information such as weather, potential and historical yield, financial benchmarking information, data-driven recommendations as well as commodity price forecasts. Farmers are also encouraged to contribute in-situ information, e.g., soils, management, and yield data. The information can then be used by crop models, which, in turn, would send tailored results back to the farmers. Initial feedback from farmers and extension agents has already improved some of the app’s characteristics. More enhancements are planned for inclusion in the future to increase the app’s function as a decision support tool.

Täistekst This is the second book in the series of Soil Sequence Atlases. The first volume was published in 2014. Main pedogeographic features are presented in the form of sequences to give a comprehensive picture of soils - their genesis and correlations with the environment in typical landscapes of Central Europe from Estonia furthest north, through Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary to the southernmost Slovenia. Soils of natural landscapes - loess and sand (continental dunes) - are presented, as well as those of plains of various origin, karst lands, low mountains, and anthropically modified soils. Each chapter presents soil profiles supplemented by landscape information and basic analytical data. Then, genetic interpretations of soil properties related to soil forming agents are given as schematic catenas. When one factor changes while the others are more or less stable, the soil sequence can be recognised. Depending on the dominant soil-forming factor affecting repeated soil patterns, different types can be distinguished. Chapters are arranged roughly in accordance with the main soil-forming process in sequences, and referring to the WRB key (peat formation, vertic and gleyic process, podzolisation, humus accumulation, clay illuviation), with one small exception - the Technosols have been placed at the end of book. The main objective of this book is to present the diversity of relations between soil and landscape, climate, hydrology and human relations, and to present interpretations reflecting the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (2015) classification with comments on the choice of qualifiers. Sixteen Reference Soil Groups are featured, and represented by 67 soil profiles. The secondary objective is pedological education. One of the aims of soil science education is to explain to students the relations between landscape and soil cover. The patterns of soil units within landscapes are to some extent predictable. The collected data is intended as a useful educational tool in teaching soil science, supporting understanding of the reasons for the variability of soil cover, and also as a WRB classification guideline. The Atlas was developed as part of the EU Erasmus+ FACES project (Freely Accessible Central European Soil). Marcin Šwitoniak, Przemyslaw Charzynski

Even in karst areas, considerably thick soils can be found in accumulation zones. There, the degree of the ground-water vulnerability depends not only on the thickness, but also on the hydraulic conductivity and retention properties of the soil cover. The hydraulic conductivity of fine-grained karst soils was studied within several international research projects. In the paper, results are discussed from different points of view.

With the use of the optimized three-step BCR sequential extraction procedure it was possible to assess the mobility of selected elements in soil profiles from Croatian and Slovakian karst terrains. The soils in the Croatian karst, were found to be enriched in Cr, Ni, V, Mn, Cu, Cd and Mo while soils from the Slovak Karst had high Pb and Zn concentrations. It was determined that the elements were most readily mobilized from the topsoil and the degree of mobility decreased with depth. Cr and Ni were mainly bound to the residual fraction, Pb in the oxidisable fraction. Cu mobility was high in samples treated with agrochemicals all through the soil profile.

Paper summarizes methods and most important results of an bilateral interdisciplinary research project on the sealing and retention properties of the fine-grained soils covering selected karst areas in Slovakia and Croatia. Regarding the groundwater vulnerability, filtration coefficient recived by four different methods will be most interesting for hydrogeologists. However, they depend not only on the grain size, but also on the type of clay minerals and soil humidity. Dealing with heavy metal pollution, a considerable part will be retarded in the soil, while the mobility and availability of the retained elements is rather low.

Presented paper brings infomation about the Slovak-Croatian scientific co-operation on a very new interdisciplinary project. In connection with the groundwater vulnerability mapping in karst areas, the aim of the study is to investigate the permeability and retention properties of fine-grained soils in brezovske karpaty Mts. and Slovensky Kras (Slovakia) and on the Istrian peninsula (Croatia).