ISRIC WDC-Soils becomes a DataONE member repository

Consistent soil data are required to underpin a wide range of environmental and societal issues. Metadata from the ISRIC – World Soil Information GeoNetwork catalogue are now discoverable and accessible from DataONE. DataONE is a community driven programme providing access to data across multiple member repositories, supporting enhanced search and discovery of Earth and environmental data.

                  View ISRIC metadata at DataONE.

“Making quality-assessed soil resources widely discoverable is an important task of ISRIC,” says Niels Batjes senior soil science expert and Coordinator of the World Data Centre for Soils (WDC-Soils). Since 1989, ISRIC has been a regular member of the World Data System (WDS). In that capacity it provides a focal point for soil-related collections and information services and ensures their long-term preservation and archiving.

Our spatial data infrastructure expert, Paul van Genuchten, liaised with experts team at DataONE to streamline the metadata harvesting process. “This was an interesting task”, said Paul, “as it included adapting schema.org annotations to include a DOI on the identifier field, for example”.

ISRIC is pleased to have joined the eminent DataONE network of data repositories, supplementing its membership of the WDS-accredited network of CoreTrustSeal certified repositories, thereby making our data holdings more widely discoverable, accessible and usable by the global community.