PROSODOL

Strategies to Improve and Protect Soil Quality from the Disposal of Olive Oil Mills' Wastes in the Mediterranean Region - PROSODOL (LIFE07 ENV/GR/000280). www.prosodol.gr

LIFE + Environment Policy and Gevernance

This collaborative project between Greece (Soil Science Institute of Athens / SSIA-NAGREF (coordinator), Institute of Mediterranean Studies / IMS-FORTH and Technical University of Greece / TUC), Spain (Centro de Edafología y Biología Aplicada del Segura, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas / CEBAS-CSIC) and Italy (Regional Centre for Agricultural Experimentation and Assistance / CERSAA) aims towards:

1. The Development and dissemination of innovative, environment friendly, low cost technologies for the protection of soil and water pollution from olive oil mills' wastes.
2. The Establishment of an info-library/knowledge-base system to assess environmental impacts from olive oil mills' wastes to Mediterranean region.
3. The Facilitation of an implementation of Soil Thematic Strategy in areas close to olive oil mills.
4. The Design, implementation and support a monitoring system for the assessment of the soil and water quality affected directly or indirectly from oil mills' activities in relation to factors pressures and responses.
5. The Identification of potential safest uses in the agricultural sector of olive oil mills' wastes and its possible contribution to agricultural production.

The Laboratory of Geophysical-Satellite Remote Sensing and Archaeo-environment of IMS-FORTH has undertook full responsibility for the design of the project's web-site in four languages (English, Spanish, Italian, Greek) and feeding the info-library with digitized maps and GIS maps of the pilot areas.  The WEB site of the project constitutes a common node of reference for all the partners.  The WEB site hosts a utility for the on-the-fly production of diagrams concerning the measurements from the chemical analyses.  Both the content material and the measurments are imported to the system through a customized utility used as an editing interface.

A number of maps related to the pilot areas of the project (Municipality of Nikiforos Fokas, Crete, Greece and Loano and Albenga Region, Liguria, Italy) were collected from various agencies and they were digitized according to their content.  The result of the digitization process was imported to the GIS platform (ArcGIS 9.3.1.) after being converted to the appropriate projection system (Roma 40 and EGSA 87 to WGS 84) and using the API of Google Earth.

The GIS cartographic products included topographic, geological, hydrogeological and landuse maps and included various cartographic elements such as Municipality Limits / coastline (1:50,000), Elevation Lines (20m), Digital Elevation Model (SPOT - 20m), Slope, Aspect, Main villages (1:50,000), Road network (1:50,000), Archaeological Sites, Population Data (villages through time), Past Agricultural Fires (Min. of Agriculture), Geological Formations (IGME - 1:50,000), Geological Faults (IGME - 1:50,000), Land Use maps (Min. of Agriculture - 1:50,000), o.a.  At the same time, layers regarding the Oil Mill Waste areas, Sampling areas - soil, Sampling areas - water, Coring/Drillhole areas were created and are expected to be filled in the course of the project with data and measurements provided by the partners.

For more information please visit the official web site of the project: www.prosodol.gr