Your Partner for Soil Information

Wise use of soil is key to global food production, biodiversity management, and climate change mitigation & adaptation. Soil is linked to various United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Soil is connected to several of the UN Sustainable Developments Goals

ISRIC can support you with spatial information on soils for your area of interest. We can also develop tailor-made applications, for example for land use planning, agricultural projects or sustainable business development.

An ever increasing number of companies have sustainability as a key strategic objective ultimately to sustain their relevance and profit. However soil is often overlooked by companies as an essential natural resource which, when wisely managed, contributes to the sustainability objectives.   

Below you will find examples of sectors where we can make a difference: 

• Ministries of Agriculture and Ministries of Environment: soil mapping, soil fertility assessments, nutrient gap maps, identification of hot spots for carbon sequestration, land suitability assessments.
• Land use planning agencies: assessments of land degradation, land suitability assessments, identification of sustainable land management practices, etc.
• Agri-business: soil-crop information systems that help in the development of site specific fertiliser formulations
• Food industry: help identifying site-specific good soil and land management practices for and with your suppliers )
• Finance sector: risk assessments
• ICT sector: remote sensing tools incorporating soil resources for analytical purposes).

Work with us!

You can benefit from the knowledge and network of ISRIC in various ways. Here are some examples:

1. Joint development of tailor-made solutions on efficient use of fertilizers or sustainable land management.
   
   Utilizing worldwide available soil information to address global issues such as food security, climate change and biodiversity is key in our strategy and intrinsically motivates our team. We take pride in developing tailor-made solutions to make better use of (in)organic fertilizers, contribute to combating land degradation, or enhancing the absorption of Green House Gasses by soils through Sustainable Land Management practices.
   
    
2. Become a sponsor of ISRIC and the World Soil Museum.
   
   Soils are fundamental in addressing important environmental issues. ISRIC’s mission is to unlock global soil information. This is a big task for a small organization. We cannot do this alone. If you want to help us and be a partner in this important task, consider becoming a sponsor. Support the mission of ISRIC for provision of information on the world’s soil resources for their sustainable use!  You are invited to take a tour through our virtual Soil Museum to discover the wonderful world of soil and its importance for humanity.
   
   ISRIC has developed a sponsor package for organizations and companies who would like to support our mission. This package includes:
   
   - Logo and company information on our website;
   
   - Logo and company name on sponsor board in the World Soil Museum (WSM);
   
   - Free admission for your groups to WSM, including a tailor-made tour;
   
   - The World Soil Museum is exclusively available for your meetings and client events.
   
    
3. Follow a training programme on soils such as our much acclaimed Spring School.
   
   An important part of ISRIC’s mission is training and education related to soils. This includes our annual Spring School event, but also tailor-made training courses or the possibility for internships and PhD/MSc theses at ISRIC. Explore the capacity-building section of our website to learn more.
   
    
4. Share your soil data with ISRIC!
   
   Soil data and information are important for science, policy development and private sector decision making. ISRIC is committed to sharing soil data. If you want to support this, share your data with us. If there are any restrictions to the use of your data we will always respect these. We offer the following modalities:
   
      (i)    safeguard a copy of your data 'as is';
   
      (ii)   transfer your data to WoSIS and have them standardised;
   
      (iii)  serve the standardized data to the international community.
   
   ISRIC supports open data and is a member of Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN). Wherever we can, we share data with an open data license.
   
   Our WoSIS soil data base provides a standardized data set (193.000 profiles and counting) for further research. Add value and impact by sharing your valuable own data sets with a trusted global database! WoSIS provides an enormous amount of standardised data which are at the core of applications related to food security or climate change. The standarised data can be accessed through various services.
   
   SoilGrids is a collection of updatable soil property and class maps of the world, currently at a resolution of 250 m, produced using state-of-the-art model-based statistical methods; the SoilGrids system is intended to facilitate global soil data initiatives and may serve as a bridge between global and local soil mapping, particularly in countries with limited soil survey data. SoilGrids has had, since its inception in 2015, numerous downloads from research organizations, ICT companies and app builders as well as national and regional development agencies.