Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD)
Soil information, from the global to the local scale, has often been the one missing biophysical information layer, the absence of which has added to the uncertainties of predicting potentials and constraints for food and fiber production. The lack of reliable and harmonized soil data has considerably hampered land degradation assessments, environmental impact studies and adapted sustainable land management interventions.
Recognizing the urgent need for improved soil information worldwide, particularly in the context of the Climate Change Convention and the Kyoto Protocol for soil carbon measurements and the immediate requirement for the FAO/IIASA Global Agro-ecological Assessment study (GAEZ v3.0), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) took the initiativeof combining the recently collected vast volumes of regional and national updates of soil information with the information already contained within the 1:5,000,000 scale FAOUNESCO Digital Soil Map of the World, into a new comprehensive Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD).
This database was achieved in partnership with:
• ISRIC-World Soil Information together with FAO, which were responsible for the development of regional soil and terrain databases and the WISE soil profile database;
• the European Soil Bureau Network, which had recently completed a major update of soil information for Europe and northern Eurasia, and
• the Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences which provided the recent 1:1,000,000 scale Soil Map of China.
INSPIRE
Identification
- File identifier
- bda461b1-2f35-4d0c-bb16-44297068e10d XML
- Hierarchy level
- Dataset
Online resource
- Protocol
- WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-ftp--download
- Protocol
- WWW:LINK-1.0-http--related
- Protocol
- WWW:LINK-1.0-http--related
Resource identifier
- code
- bda461b1-2f35-4d0c-bb16-44297068e10d
- Metadata language
- English
- Spatial representation type
- Grid
Encoding
- Format
- zip
Projection
- code
- 4326
Classification of data and services
- Topic category
-
- Geoscientific information
Classification of data and services
Coupled resource
Coupled resource
Classification of data and services
Coupled resource
Coupled resource
Keywords
- Stratum
-
- Soil science
- Region
-
- Global
Other keywords
- Theme
-
- soil profiles
Geographic coverage
Temporal reference
Temporal extent
- Begin
- 2008-01-01
- End
- 2012-02-01
Temporal extent
- Date (Publication)
- 2012-02-01
Quality and validity
- Distance
- 30 arc-second
Conformity
Conformity
Conformity
Conformity
Conformity
Conformity
Restrictions on access and use
- Access constraints
- Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International (CC BY-NC 3.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
Responsible organization (s)
Contact for the resource
- Organisation name
- Joint Research Centre of the European Commission - European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC)
- None
- Organisation name
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
- None
- Organisation name
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
- None
- Organisation name
- ISRIC - World Soil Information
- None
- Organisation name
- Joint Research Centre of the European Commission - European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC)
- None
- Organisation name
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
- monica.petri@fao.org
- Organisation name
- ISRIC - World Soil Information
- niels.batjes@isric.org
- Organisation name
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
- None
- Organisation name
- ISRIC - World Soil Information
- None
- Organisation name
- Institute of Soil Science - Chinese Academy of Sciences
- None
Responsible organization (s)
Contact for the resource
- Organisation name
- Joint Research Centre of the European Commission - European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC)
- None
- Organisation name
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
- None
- Organisation name
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
- None
- Organisation name
- ISRIC - World Soil Information
- None
- Organisation name
- Joint Research Centre of the European Commission - European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC)
- None
- Organisation name
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
- monica.petri@fao.org
- Organisation name
- ISRIC - World Soil Information
- niels.batjes@isric.org
- Organisation name
- International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
- None
- Organisation name
- ISRIC - World Soil Information
- None
- Organisation name
- Institute of Soil Science - Chinese Academy of Sciences
- None
Metadata information
Contact for the metadata
- Organisation name
- ISRIC - World Soil Information
- Date stamp
- 2021-07-14T11:52:32
- Metadata language
- English
- Character set
- UTF8