Introduction

Abstract

After Dokutchaev’s monograph on the Russian chernozem, the next decisive event in the development of soil science in Europe was the first conference on European Agrogeology, which prominent geologists from 23 countries held in Budapest in 1909. The conference was attended by the famous Croatian geologist Gorjanović Kramberger, far better known for finding fossils of Neanderthal man in Krapina. A milestone in the development of soil science in Croatia occurred during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy: namely, after the establishment of the Higher Royal Agricultural and Forestry School at Križevci in 1877, M. Kišpatić published “Zemljoznanstvo” (Earth-knowledge), the first textbook on soil science in the Croatian language, and one of the first in the world. Professor Mihovil Gračanin (1901–1981), a famous soil scientist and plant ecologist at the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Zagreb, assumed an important role in the development of soil sciences in Croatia. His message, printed under the title of this chapter, inspired a generation of Croatian soil scientists and became a motto for their activities. The most significant, epoch-making document on Croatian soils is the General Soil Map of Croatia (GSMC) at a scale of 1:50,000, prepared during the period 1964–1985. After the printing of individual sheets of the GSM with Explanatory book, there followed the publication of regional monographs on soils. Four monographs with maps of an adequate scale were published: Soils of Upper Posavina, Soils of Slavonia and Baranja, Pedosphere of Istria and Soils of the Mountainous Croatia. The GSMC data form a reliable basis to a unique information system on the soils of Croatia—the Croatian Soil Information System (CROSIS)—as part of the Environment Information System of Croatia (EISC). CROSIS is an important basis for the creation of sustainable soil and land management practices in agriculture and forestry as well as the Croatian Soil Protection Strategy (CSPS), and has other uses related to multifunctionality of soil/land and development of a thematic strategy for soil protection in the EU. European soil scientists are organized within national societies as autonomous organizations. Following a proposal by the famous Austrian soil scientist and Secretary General of ISSS (International Society of Soil Science) Prof. W. Blum, in 2006 these national societies were associated into the European Confederation of Soil Science Societies (ECSSS). Starting and for a long period developing within the field of agricultural and forest sciences, the last few decades have seen research activities in soil science becoming more and more occupied by the “non-productive” functions of soil: as an acceptor, accumulator, transformer, or source of emission into the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and/or biosphere (food chain) of different pollutants. A logical consequence is for soil science to “move” to the category of environmental sciences.

Croatian people, in a real sense, ‘live on the soil’; on their own part of the pedosphere they built their own life in the past, and will build it in the future. The soils of Croatia are the greatest wealth of the Croatian people, an inexhaustible source of their vigour and the foundation of the Croatian homeland….

Prof.dr.sc. M. Gračanin (1942).