Download SP0549 Audit of Soils-Related Education and Awareness

SP0549
Appendix 6:
Survey of Soils-Related Education and Awareness: Exhibitions - Unter
Welten Exhibition, Museum am Scholerberg, Osnabruck, Germany
Dick Thompson (NSRI, Cranfield University) visited the Museum am Scholerberg at the
invitation of Norbert Neidernostheide, Head of the Museum’s Environment Department
after meeting him at Eurosoil 2004 in Freiberg. This article summarises this initiative.
Norbert is the architect of the Unter Welten soil exhibition that is the main
feature of the museum and at its heart. The building is in the shape of an
ammonite, and the exhibition occupies at least a third of the floor space.
All the other exhibits are related to it. The thinking is that soil is central to
all natural things. It is designed to take the visitor into the soil so that they
see the world from the eyes of a soil animal. There are also urban exhibits
where there is pointedly no soil. The exhibition attracts 100,000 visitors a
year and numbers are not dropping off. The exhibition is widely
advertised in the city and there is even a commuter train painted up as an
advert for Unter Welten. More details are given in German on
http://www.osnabrueck.de/unterwelten/
The nearby Fazcination Soil Park was created at a cost of EUR350K by the local District
Council as a satellite exhibition to the EXPO 2000 in Hamburg. Timo Kluttig of the
Council’s Countryside section manages the park and showed us around.
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The Faszination Soil exhibition has a collection of local rock samples to explain the local
geology and then a part-sunken pavilion with preserved soil profiles representing the
local soils. Each soil profile, which has been extracted on a webbing backcloth using an
impregnation and peel method, sits below a window onto an outside example of the
related land use/vegetation. There is room inside the building for school-oriented exhibits
aimed at demonstrating the various components of soil and the relevance of soils to
aspects of everyday life – the functions it provides.
Osnabruck is now laying even more
ambitious plans for a future Centre
for Soil Communication. This aims
to put Osnabruck at the centre of
soil in Europe bridging the gap
between academics and the general
public. The focus will be on soil
didactics – the communication of
soil. New buildings are being
designed including a meeting room
and an underground zoological
exhibition space that will connect
the Museum and the neighbouring
Norbert inside a giant earthworm
Zoo. Live animals will be viewable
underground in a soil labyrinth
through which visitors will be able to roam. Funding is not available at present but the
project has the support of the District Council, City Council, local Applied Science
University (which teaches soil science at undergraduate level). Raising public awareness
and understanding of soil and making academics realise the importance of
communicating with the public are central to the concept.
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