PEDOMETRICS and how did it become

Overview of PM activities

The working Group on Pedometrics (PM) was established at the World Congress of Soil Science in Kyoto, Japan, 1990. From then on, PM has organized a number of meetings:

• 2005, September 12-14, Naples, Florida, USA. Pedometrics 2005. The proceedings will be published as a Special Issue of Geoderma.
• 2004, September 14-17, Montpellier, France. Global Workshop on Digital Soil Mapping. The proceedings will be published as a Special publication.
• 2003, September 11-12, Reading, UK. Pedometrics 2003. The proceedings were published as a Special issue of Geoderma(2005, Volume 128, Issues 3-4).
• 2001, September 19-21, Gent, Belgium. Pedometrics 2001. The proceedings were published as a Special issue of Geoderma(2003, Volume 112, Issues 3-4).
• 1999, September 27-29, Sydney, Australia: Pedometrics 1999. The proceedings have been published as a Special Issue of Geoderma (2001, Volule 103, Issue 1-2: 1-229).
• 1998, August 19, Montpellier, France: One-day Symposium on "Soil Geostatistics", prior to the World Congress on Soil Science. The proceedings have been published as a Special Issue of Geoderma (2000, Vol. 97, Nos. 3-4: 1-424).
• 1997, August 18-20, Madison (Wisconsin), U.S.A.: Pedometrics 1997. The proceedings have been published as a Special Issue of Geoderma (1999, Vol. 89, Nos. 1-2: 1-175).
• 1996, August 7-9, Wageningen, The Netherlands: "Soil and Water Quality at Different Scales" (together with the Working Groups on Soil and Moisture Variability, and Soil Pollution). The proceedings have been published as a Special Issue of Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems (1998, Vol. 50, Nos. 1-3: 1-324).
• 1995, October 30, St. Louis, U.S.A.: "Fuzzy sets in soil science". The proceedings have been published as a Special Issue of Geoderma (1997, Vol. 77, Nos. 2-4: 85-339).
• 1992, September 1-3, Wageningen, The Netherlands, Pedometrics-92 The proceedings have been published as a Special Issue of Geoderma (1994, Vol. 62, Nos. 1-3: 1-326).

Historical documents

On October 7 of 1987, Dr. J. J. de Gruijter and Dr. A. B. McBratney sent a three pages letter Dr. W. C. Sombroek, Secretary-General of the International Society of Soil Sciences (ISSS) to discuss the possibility of setting up a Working Group on Pedometrics (PM) within the ISSS (see the scaned copy). In response to this request, the Executive Committee of the ISSS, during its mid-term meeting in Alma Ata, USSR, september 18, 1988 agreed to the establishment, on a provisional basis, of a "Working Group on Pedometrics" (WG/TM). This is their confirmation letter sent by Dr. W. C. Sombroek.

Pedometrics is much based on the work of Alex McBratney's. Here you can access the annotated handwritten draft of a letter sent by Alex to the ISSS requesting to establish a Pedometrics Working Group. Down-below you can see Alex's lecture notes of his first course on pedometrics developed in 1986 "Introduction to Pedometrics". Many ideas from this lecture notes are still inspiring.