Soil data from Italy (Sicily)

Soil erosion and water deficit traditionally affect agriculture of Mediterranean areas. In Sicily, these issues are complicated by the very accentuated spatial and temporal variability of rainfall that concentrates in the northern coast and in the period from October to April. Modelling of the hydrological processes may help to prevent soil loss, predict the fate of agrochemicals in the soil profile, optimize dry agriculture and manage irrigation. However, agro-hydrological simulation models require the detailed knowledge of the soil hydraulic properties, i.e. the water retention curve and the hydraulic conductivity function. The Sicilian regional administration has recently published a new edition of the soil map of Siciliy (Perciabosco et al., 2012). Unfortunately, the very significant information contained in that map doesn’t include detailed hydrological data. Therefore, despite being largely studied, the Sicilian soils were never systematically sampled for determining their hydrological properties. The soil data included in the EU-HYDI database were collected during several projects conducted by the Hydraulic Section of the Department of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences (SAF) – University of Palermo and Funded by the Sicilian regional administration (Regione Siciliana, Assessorato delle Risorse Agricole ed Alimentari), and Environmental Protection Agency of Sicily (ARPA).