The systematic inventory of soil resources constitutes a national, economic and social necessity for a country. The rational exploitation of soil resources should be supported by technical knowledge (e.g. soil studies), and should not be based entirely on the "experience" or empirical methods. Moreover, the new Common Agricultural Policy of E.U. (C.A.P. reform) imposes to member states the implementation of correct agricultural and environmentally friendly practices (rational irrigation and fertilization, prevention of groundwater nitrate pollution and eutrophication of water bodies from agricultural activities among others) from the farmers, as essential conditions for their subsidy. The Soil Science Institute of Thessaloniki is conducting applied research in different areas of Greece in order to tackle the above issues and put them in practice. It produces new digitized Soil Maps that provide a useful electronic database for the spatial representation of the soil variation within a region, based on in situ soil sampling, laboratory analyses, GIS techniques and plant nutrition mathematical models, coupled with the local land cadastre. The novelty of these studies is that local agronomists have immediate access to a wide range of soil information by clicking on a field parcel shown in this digital interface. Moreover, it helps the farmers to have detailed view of the soil at the farm level, its possibilities, its problems and weaknesses and therefore to suggest an appropriate treatment (e.g. liming, manure incorporation, desalination, application of proper type and quantity of fertilizer) depending on the field conditions and cultivated crops. The software (provided on CD) automatically calculates the fertilization needs for each farm, displays and prints a detailed two-page guideline to the farmer, namely: on the first page there is a map of the farm as well as information regarding the farm's nutritional status according to soil analysis. on the second page the fertilization advice is provided for the particular crop, based on the soil nutritional status. A specific case study is presented in the current work with regards to the construction of the digitized Soil Map of the regional unit of Kastoria. The potential of this map can easily be realized by the fact that the mapping of the physical and chemical properties of the soils in this region provided delineation zones for differential fertilization management, as e.g. the soil concentrations of potassium varied in this area. An experiment was conducted also using remote sensing techniques for the enhancement of the fertilization advisory software database, which is a component of the digitized soil map, and the optimization of nitrogen management in agricultural areas. The feedback provided by the farmers in these pilot scale studies was been extremely positive, so that the Soil Science Institute of Thessaloniki continued to upgrade the existing software in order to transform it into a dynamically evolving tool in an online platform. Further research is currently carried out to incorporate other factors in the software, such as meteorological data, irrigation, plant protection, etc. The final goal is to provide a common online platform with a uniform, integrated user friendly interface in order to facilitate the management of agricultural land.
