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ISRIC Soil Information System (ISIS)

When ISRIC - World Soil Information was established as International Soil Museum in 1966, its main objective was to assemble soil profiles, soil samples and associated information to illustrate the units of the printed FAO-Unesco Soil Map of the World.

At present, the reference soil collection consists of over 950 monoliths, from over 70 countries, accompanied by detailed soil profile and environmental data. In addition, the monolith collection is supported by maps, country reports, thin sections, and a slide collection.

A selection of our monoliths is on permanent display in the World Soil Museum.

To facilitate storage and management of the soil and environmental data, the ISRIC Soil Information System (ISIS) was created in 1986. The database, currently in MS Access format, is being converted to SQL to permit on-line querying.

The following data are stored in ISIS:

Site data: Some 60 attributes on location, geology, landform, soil surface properties, hydrology, land-use and vegetation.
Climatic data: Average monthly data of meteorological elements of one or more meteorological stations relevant to the site.
Soil data:
- Attributes for soil classification in the FAO-Unesco Legend (1974), the Revised FAO-Unesco Legend (1988), World Reference Base for Soil Resources, USDA Soil Taxonomy and a national classification system
- Soil profile description according to FAO Guidelines
- Some 100 physical, chemical and mineralogical attributes. Analytical data in ISIS have been analysed using standard methods.

A selection of the ISIS-profiles has been described in detail in so-called Soil Briefs. These reports discuss the formation, properties and suitability of one or more related soils in their agro-ecological setting. Soil Briefs  present full soil analytical data and colour pages with photographs of the landscape(s) and soil profile(s).

Soil profile descriptions held in ISIS have also been used to consolidate the WISE Global Soil Profile Dataset as well as national and supra-national scale SOTER databases.   more ...

Maintenance of the data and completion of analytical data remain an important task but emphasis will shift  to use of the data, verification for applications, and data generation by pedotransfer functions (PDF)


                             Click on a continent for a summary of the underlying information

Note: Please contact Dr O Spaargaren for details about dataset availability.

Data usage and citation //  Disclaimer