ISRIC’s soil library and map collection holds more than 10,000 maps and 17,000 reports and books related to soil information from all over the world. This collection is open to the public and much of our holdings have been digitized and are available to view online.

ISRIC – World Soil Information, host of the World Data Centre for Soils, was re-certified as a Trustworthy Data Repository by the CoreTrustSeal Standards and Certification Board through 2026. This complements our re-accreditation as a regular member of the International Science Council (ISC) World Data System earlier this year.

The twenty-first session of the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) takes place this week from 13 to 17 November in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

ISRIC – World Soil Information recently released an expanded webtool for visualising, querying and downloading of world soil data. This update expands on the initial SoilGrids and World Soil Information Service (WoSIS) platform launched in 2020 and provides improved performance for data access via -Web Coverage Service (WCS) and Web Map Service (WMS).

During the 2023 main cropping season, research fieldwork was carried out in Ethiopia by PhD candidate Musefa Redi Abegaz in support of climate-smart agriculture, specifically to derive climate-smart fertilizer recommendations in Ethiopia. This research is part of the the Land Soil Crop Information Services (LSC Hubs) project.

Increasing soil carbon stocks is one option in our global toolbox to reach important targets such as the Paris Agreement commitments and EU Green Deal. International coordination of research on conserving and increasing soil carbon is essential. This will help us harness the co-benefits for climate change mitigation and adaptation, soil health and food security.

European Union (EU) funded Horizon 2020 Soils4Africa project held its third Annual Project Meeting in May 2023 in Accra, Ghana. The gathering provided an opportunity to reflect on achievements and lessons learned so far by this four-year continent-wide project in Africa.

At ISRIC – World Soil Information we have large global datasets, but often people would like to have data for a smaller area such as a single country. If you are looking for freely accessible, quality-assessed soil data for one or more countries, you can easily search for that using the new GraphQL API linked to the WoSIS (World Soil Information Service) database.

On the surface of Mars, can we call the loose material covering the Red Planet ‘soil’? What are its characteristics compared to Earth’s soil and could it ever host human life? These questions are the basis of a new temporary exhibit at the ISRIC World Soil Museum which begins on Wednesday, September 13 called Red Planet Regolith: All about the fine dust that covers Mars.

_{President of Moldova Maia Sandu visiting the World Soil Museum. Photo credit: Guy Ackermans}

On Tuesday 5 September the ISRIC World Soil Museum was honored to host a very special guest: President of Moldova Maia Sandu. President Sandu visited the museum as part of her visit to Wageningen University & Research (WUR) to explore collaboration on agriculture, food security and climate change.