Issues in Contemporary Agriculture: Environment

A New Digital Soil Map of the World

GlobalSoilMap.net, a consortium led by ISRIC - World Soil Information, based in Wageningen, the Netherlands - is a new global project that aims to make a new digital soil map of the world using state-of-the-art and emerging technologies for soil mapping and predicting soil properties at fine resolution. This new global soil map will be supplemented by interpretation and functionality options that aim to assist better decisions in a range of global issues like food production and hunger eradication, climate change, and environmental degradation. This is an initiative of the Digital Soil Mapping Working Group of the International Union of Soil Sciences IUSS.

In November 2008, an $18 million grant was obtained from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to map most parts in Sub-Sahara Africa, and make all Sub-Saharan Africa data available. From this grant there are also funds for coordinating global efforts and for the establishment of a global consortium. Several institutions have assumed a leading role in this effort.

The GlobalSoilMap.net project will also foster collaboration between institutions in Canada, Mexico and the USA to produce soil property data that is transnational in nature, according to Jon Hempel, Co-Director-National Geospatial Development Centre of the National Resource Conservation Service in the USA. Jon Hempel: "Legacy and heritage soil survey data holdings across North America that have been produced at different scales and under different taxonomic systems will be harmonized into a common, consistent and geographically contiguous dataset of soil properties. It will allow scientists and officials to more easily make application of the data for many interpretive uses across the North American continent."

For more information, visit GlobalSoilMap.net