1 ΠΕΔΟМΕΤΡΟΝ From the Chair Dear colleagues, Welcome to the 44st issue of Pedometron. Summer has returned to Europe and along with it a new issue of the Pedometron. Just in time, before many of our colleagues leave their office to enjoy a well - deserved summer break. Only few weeks ago, we had Pedometrics 2019 in Guelph, Canada. It was great to see that so many of you attended this conference. The planning of Pedometrics 2021 has already start- ed. Dr. Wirastuti Widyatmanti from Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia and colleagues, kindly agreed to host the 2021 conference at Bali. She presented her plans during the Pedometrics Business meeting and it looks very promising. In this issue we prepared for you the regular items, including the Pedometrics Comic, Poetry, Pe- domathemagica and ‘What’s new in R’. An important contribution in this issue is the ‘ In Memoriam’ written my Richard Webster for John Gower, who passed away in May this year, at the age of 89. He was a mathematician whose influence on pedometrics has been profound. It is good to see that the Pedometrics community is such an active community, resultingly we are organ- izing scientific workshops and sessions at many conferences. Aside from Pedometrics2019, we had SoilMapping2019 in Santiago, Chili. Here, the IUSS Pedometrics working groups Digital Soil Mapping and GlobalSoilMap combined their biannual meeting. In April, we had various sessions at the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union. From discussions we had during the workshops, we see that there is an increase in the use of machine learning for producing soil maps. Along with that, we start to critically review the use of such tech- niques. At Pedometrics, we opened the discussion by presenting our case on mapping soil carbon using pseudo-covariates. In this Pedometron, Alex McBratney and Budiman Minasny have made a contribu- tion to the discussion with an article ‘Pedometrics is soil data science +++’. In the last issue, Gerard Heuvelink introduced the PM10 Challenges, in which he proposed to prioritize our research agenda. In this issue, we welcomed the contributions from our peers to discuss the agenda and complement it with new challenges. You will find contributions to the PM10 Challenges from Johan Bouma, Philippe Lagacherie, Zamir Libohova and Lin Yang. We further introduce an inventory on how young scientists were trained in Pedometrics during their under- and graduate studies. We hope that with this inventory we can get a better insight on what stu- dents need during their studies and strengthen the university curricula on Pedometrics and soil science in general. Also, it is a great way to get to know the young pedometricians. It was not easy to find young scientists willing to contribute. So, hereby I invite all young pedometricians to make a contribution for the next Pedometron. That is all for now! Happy reading and be inspired! Titia Mulder June, Wageningen, The Netherlands In this issue In Memoriam ...................... 2 Announcements .................. 5 In conversation with ........... 9 Conference reports ............. 13 Pedomathemagica .............. 18 A cartoon ............................ 19 Hand-on soil biodiversity! .. 20 A poem ............................... 23 What’s new in R? ............... 24 Book review ....................... 26 Another cartoon!................. 27 The PM10 challenges ......... 28 Capacity building ............... 37 Soil data science ................. 40 Soil Genesis on Canvas ...... 43 Delivered by Chair Titia Mulder Vice-chair Nicolas Saby Editor Alexandre Wadoux Newsletter of the Pedometrics Commission of the IUSS Issue 44, June 2019