Read ISRIC - World Soil Information's 2018-2019 Annual Report
Today, ISRIC - World Soil Information releases our 2018-2019 Annual Report, with highlights from our major areas of work:
- Provisioning quality-assessed global soil information
- Helping others produce soil data products for their own geography
- Contributing resources for sustainable land management
- Educating about global soil diversity
We invite you to take a look and explore some of the interesting collaborations and soil data products that have been at the top of our list in recent years. The report begins on an inspiring note with words from Director Rik van den Bosch (expert below):
In our digital world, data is more valuable than ever. We need to answer questions such as: where is land quality getting better or worse? Where are soils storing or releasing the most carbon? To do that, scientists and policymakers need data they can trust. At ISRIC - World Soil Information, this is our passion—working behind the scenes to continually improve the quality of soil data, at a global and national level, so that people can make important decisions about how to manage land.
As celebrated as environmental data may be, the job of stewarding soil information is often overlooked. We future-proof IT infrastructure. We redesign soil database workflows. We store one of the world’s largest soil reference collection in our basement. This is not glamourous work, but it is valuable and we take pride in it. In 2018, we received our re-accreditation as the World Data Centre for Soils with the Core Trust Seal. In 2019, we simultaneously released an update to WoSIS, our global point data repository, and SoilGridsTM, our set of global soil property maps. Though in the world of soil data there are few Champaign-popping moments, in this report we take a time to celebrate a few milestones.