The Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS) Web Map Service supports the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) OpenGIS Web Map Service (WMS) Implementation Specifications and dynamically produces maps of georeferenced data. Support of this international standard opens the AfSIS map collection to users who can access its contents via machine-to-machine interaction. View our online maps here.

These use cases primarily address AfSIS data products and services that are either needed or available at the beginning of the second year of the project term. Two of these deal with the acquisition of legacy data for soil profile data and management trials; a third addresses the base maps that have been developed from remote sensing imagery and will be used to construct digital soil maps of key soil properties. The fourth concerns the dissemination of field, lab, and analytical data from the sentinel landscapes.

AfSIS uses a variety of free and open source software (FOSS) for Web-based services, data management, and statistical analysis.

 Mobile Data Entry Using CyberTracker Software

A GPS-based data entry system has been developed and deployed for AfSIS sentinel landscape field surveys. This system uses CyberTracker software, which is an efficient way of gathering geo-referenced information. Field data are backed up to a field computer and external drives in field and regularly transmitted to the central AfSIS data repository at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute (TSBF), Nairobi. The data entry system includes efficient electronic workflows that are specifically adapted to the AfSIS field surveys, and have been extensively tested in field.

The release of the ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) was announced by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and NASA on June 29, 2009. The GDEM is distributed as 1 x 1 degree tiles, and has a spatial resolution of 30 m (i.e. equivalent to Landsat TM and ETM+). The AfSIS team is currently compiling the GDEM for the African continent, and will be running analysis and quality checks on this during the course of the next few weeks.

GlobalSoilMap.net is a new global project that aims to make a new digital soil map. Alex McBratney from the University of Sydney in Australia enthuses about the new map, “The global digital soil map will use advances in technologies including remote sensing, data mining and spatial databases, and our improved scientific understanding of soil, for accurate prediction and sampling of soil properties.

Africa:
Africa South of the Sahara (ITC Compendium of On-line Soil Survey Information)

Global:
ISRIC - World Soil Information Global Datasets (ITC Compendium)

Regional: