SUITMA 1 - Essen, Germany

Its first international conference had the WG SUITMA in Essen, Germany from July 12th to 18th 2000 in co-operation of DBG-Deutsche Bodenkundliche Gesellschaft/German Soil Science Society, AFES – Association Francaise pour l’Etude du Sol/French Soil Science Society (Burghardt, 2001) and the University Essen, Germany (Burghardt, 2001). The 1^st SUITMA Conference was chaired by prof. Wolfgang Burghardt.

The Conference was attended by 161 scientists from 37 countries. The 1^st SUITMA-Conference comprised in 3 days oral and poster presentations, Small Group Discussions on the objectives of the conference themes, a Research Partner Mediation Event, the presentation of five urban soils maps (Kiel, Eckernförde, Oberhausen, Herne, Stuttgart) and in addition, 5 one day excursions.

At the 1^st SUITMA Conference the number of contributions was 214. Among them were 106 oral presentations. The contributions were published as proceedings in 4 Volumes edited by W. Burghardt, Chr. Dornauf, 2000).

The program of the first SUITMA had three major themes of the conference subdivided into 22 subtopics:

A – the Unknown Urban Soil – Detection, Resources and Face;

B – Application of Soil Information;

C – Soil Quality and Problems.

As a parto of the congress, five one day excursions were organized:

A – Modified soils (by stratification, mixing, compaction, contamination, humus accumulation, fine earth reduction by skeleton content, ground water lowering);

B – Soils from man-made substrates (ruble, waste, sludge, ash, slag, thermal cleaned soil);

C – Urban soil use (park, forest, vegetable garden, playground, storm water infiltration, biotopes);

D – Extreme contaminated soils, soils as sources of fine dust (PM₁₀),

E – Soils from hard coal mining and soil reclamation.

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Detailed description of the event by W. Burghardt was presented in:

Bulletin of theInternational Union of Soil Sciences, No. 99 2001/1: 73-75. ISSN0374-0447.

excursion Gelsenkirchen Schongelberg, storm water infiltration sites (Fot. W. Burghardt)

excursion Essen Karnap, ash field (Fot. W. Burghardt)