ISRIC seminar on the World Soil Reference Collection

On 29th March 2018, we celebrated the completion of a 7-year program aiming at further improvement of the quality and accessibility of the World Soil Reference Collection. During this international event various speakers highlighted the relevance of the collection and its potential in addressing a range of contemporary societal and environmental challenges. 

In 2011, we have started a 7-year programme (SOLEX) to improve the quality and accessibility of the World Soil Reference Collection. In this programme we (o.a.) collected and prepared 70 additional soil monoliths. We built the virtual soil museum, providing online access to various parts of the museum. Further we improved our workshop and developed new and environmental friendly ways to prepare soil monoliths.

The World Soil Reference Collection is unique in the world and now includes over thousand preserved soil profiles representing all climatic and physiographic zones of the world. For each profile, we have physical and chemical data for the various horizons with associated physical soil samples. The collection forms an important part of our holdings as World Data Centre for Soils within the ICSU World Data System (ICSU-WDS).