soil data
Developing Soil Maps and a Soil Health Surveillance System
At present no standards, definitions or criteria exist for the assembly, mapping and interpretation of soil legacy data sets, case definitions, soil health and degradation, diagnostic tests, and sampling designs for assessing and monitoring soil condition. It is thus difficult to derive spatially and temporally consistent evaluations of the occurrence of soil degradation, or to provide evidence-based management recommendations for maintaining and improving soil health.
A Globally Distributed Soil Spectral Library: Visible Near Infrared Diffuse Reflectance Spectra
The need to maintain the health of the soil resource base as an imperative for sustainable development is increasingly being recognized. Science and technological developments in remote sensing are providing new opportunities for low cost and efficient applications for characterizing and monitoring the health of the soil resource base. We are pleased to introduce this spectral library of world soils, which will provide a valuable resource for research and applications for sensing soil quality both in the laboratory and from space.
Soil Profile Legacy Data
The map below indicates the existing paper soil maps and the number of soil profiles (legacy data) in various databases. The spatial and soil profile data, which has been incorporated in a database, includes: Southern Africa, Central Africa, and Senegal (the area in green in the map below). For the other countries, existing soil survey reports, old paper maps and soil profile data are being collected where feasible. We estimate that half of the legacy data is located at NARS and the other half of the data is available at ISRIC (e.g. WISE database, map library).
