WoSIS snapshot - September 2019

The World Soil Information Service (WoSIS) provides quality-assessed and standardised soil profile data to support digital soil mapping and environmental applications at broad scale levels. Since the release of the first ‘WoSIS snapshot’, in July 2016, many new soil data were shared with us, registered in the ISRIC data repository, and subsequently standardised in accordance with the licences specified by the data providers. Soil profile data managed in WoSIS were contributed by a wide range of data providers, therefore special attention was paid to measures for soil data quality and the standardisation of soil property definitions, soil property values (and units of measurement), and soil analytical method descriptions.

We presently consider the following soil chemical properties (organic carbon, total carbon, total carbonate equivalent, total Nitrogen, Phosphorus (extractable-P, total-P, and P-retention), soil pH, cation exchange capacity, and electrical conductivity) and physical properties (soil texture (sand, silt, and clay), bulk density, coarse fragments, and water retention), grouped according to analytical procedures (aggregates) that are operationally comparable.

Further, for each profile, we provide the original soil classification (FAO, WRB, USDA, and version) and horizon designations insofar as these have been specified in the source databases. Measures for geographical accuracy (i.e. location) of the point data as well as a first approximation for the uncertainty associated with the operationally defined analytical methods are presented, for possible consideration in digital soil mapping and subsequent earth system modelling.

The present snapshot, referred to as ‘WoSIS snapshot - September 2019’, comprises 196,498 geo-referenced profiles originating from 173 countries. They represent over 832 thousand soil layers (or horizons), and over 6 million records. The actual number of observations for each property varies (greatly) between proﬁles and with depth, this generally depending on the objectives of the initial soil sampling programmes.

The downloadable ZIP file has the data in TSV (tab separated values) and GeoPackage format. It contains the following files:

- ReadmeFirst_WoSIS_2019dec04.pdf (546.7 KB)

- wosis_201909.gpkg (2.2 GB, same data as in the tsv)

- wosis_201909_attributes.tsv (8.7 KB)

- wosis_201909_layers_chemical.tsv (893.5 MB)

- wosis_201909_layers_physical.tsv (890.7 MB)

- wosis_201909_profiles.tsv (18.8 MB)

To read the data in R, please, uncompress the ZIP file and specify the uncompressed folder. Then use read_tsv to read the TSV files, specifying the data types for each column (c = character, i = integer, n = number, d = double, l = logical, f = factor, D = date, T = date time, t = time).

setwd("/YourFolder/WoSIS_2019_September/")

attributes = readr::read_tsv('wosis_201909_attributes.tsv', col_types='cccciicd')

profiles = readr::read_tsv('wosis_201909_profiles.tsv', col_types='icccdddiicccciccccicccc')

chemical = readr::read_tsv('wosis_201909_layers_chemical.tsv', col_types='iiddclcdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccc')

physical = readr::read_tsv('wosis_201909_layers_physical.tsv', col_types='iiddclcdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccc')

For more detailed instructions on how to read the data with R, please visit https://www.isric.org/accessing-wosis-using-r.

Citation:

Batjes N.H, Ribeiro E, and van Oostrum A.J.M, 2019. Standardised soil profile data for the world (WoSIS snapshot - September 2019), https://doi.org/10.17027/isric-wdcsoils.20190901.

The dataset accompanies the following data paper: Batjes N.H., Ribeiro E., and van Oostrum A.J.M., 2019. Standardised soil profile data to support global mapping and modelling (WoSIS snapshot - 2019). Earth System Science Data, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-299-2020.

Date (Publication): 2019-09-06

Citation identifier: ca880bd4-cff8-11e9-8046-0cc47adaa92c

Citation identifier: doi: / 10.17027/isric-wdcsoils.20190901

Presentation form: Digital map

Status: Completed

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
ISRIC - World Soil Information	Niels Batjes	niels.batjes@isric.org	Author
ISRIC - World Soil Information	Ad van Oostrum	ad.vanoostrum@isric.org	Author
ISRIC - World Soil Information	Eloi Ribeiro		Author
ISRIC - World Soil Information	Data infodesk	data@isric.org	Point of contact

Theme

bulk density
cation exchange capacity
soil classification
coarse fragments
clay
effective cation exchange capacity
electrical conductivity
organic carbon
pH
sand
silt
calcium carbonate
texture
water retention
soil profiles

Stratum

Soil science

Region

Global

Access constraints: License

Use constraints: License

Other constraints: Licenced per profile, as specified by data provider and indicated in the data

Spatial representation type: Vector

Denominator: 100000

Language: English

Character set: UTF8

Topic category

Geoscientific information

Begin date: 1918-01-01

End date: 2016-07-05

Reference system identifier: EPSG / 4326

Distribution format

Name	Version
Niels H. Batjes

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
ISRIC - World Soil Information		info@isric.org	Resource provider

Digital transfer options

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-ftp--download	https://files.isric.org/public/wosis_snapshot/WoSIS_2019_September.zip	Download zip
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--related	https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-299-2020	Scientific paper
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--related	https://www.isric.org/explore/wosis/faq-wosis	Project webpage