Welcome to ISRIC World Soil Information

We are an independent knowledge centre, established in 1966. Our mandate is to serve the international community with information about the world’s soils  and thus to resolving major global issues.

We aim to:

  • Inform and educate about the world’s soils
  • Serve the scientific community as custodian of global soil information
  • Undertake applied research on land and water resources

We are the World Data Centre for Soils (WDC-Soils) within the ICSU World Data System. We also maintain the World Soil Museum and World Soil Library.

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Current themes

Web based soil maps

ISRIC develops a range of web-based digital soil maps, for scientists, policy makers and land users

Temporary soil museum open

Forty soil profiles are now on show at the temporary World Soil Museum location in the Gaia building. Visitors can learn about the main soil types in the Netherlands and get an impression of the enormous variation of soils in the world.

25.000 articles and 8000 maps

Do you need soil information of Amsterdam, Zimbabwe, Asia or the whole world? ISRIC’s library has built up a collection of around 8000 (digitized) maps and 15.000 reports and books.

News

Valuable soil data collected during decades of soil survey campaigns in sub-Saharan Africa are now easy to download from a new database compiled by ISRIC – World Soil Information.

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26/04/2012

African soil profiles database now on line

Storing carbon in soil and vegetation provides rainfed farmers with an opportunity to participate in emerging carbon offset markets. The reward that rainfed farmers might be able to earn by storing carbon has now been calculated for the Upper Tana river catchment in Southeast Kenya.

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26/04/2012

Carbon storage opportunity for Kenyan farmers

The World Soil Museum houses 90-year-old soil samples of remarkable historical value. They were collected under the supervision of one the most famous soil scientists in the world: the Russian professor Konstantin D. Glinka. The story of this ‘Glinka collection’ has now been unravelled by ISRIC’s guest researcher Cristine Muggler, professor at the Universidade Federal de Vicosa in Brazil. The story, as well as some of the ‘Glinka soil samples’, can be found at the Museum.

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09/02/2012

ISRIC's ‘Glinka collection’ of remarkable historical value


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Global Issues

Combatting land degradation

Isric’s projects aim to combat land degradation and desertification 

Mitigating climate change

Land management practices can help to reduce net atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations

Biodiversity conservation

Reversing land degradation protects biodiversity

Recent publications

Projected changes in soil organic carbon stocks upon adoption of recommended soil and water conservation practices in the Upper Tana river catchment, Kenya.  Land degradation & development (2012)    more...

All publications