ISRIC

ISRIC – World Soil Information is an independent foundation with a mission to serve the international community as a custodian of global soil information. We support soil data, information and knowledge provisioning at global, national and sub-national levels for application into sustainable management of soil and land.

World Data Centre for Soils

ISRIC is a regular member of the World Data System (WDS) and has been accredited as the World Data Centre for Soils (WDC-Soils) since 1989. Accreditation as the World Data Centre for Soils provides an endorsement for ISRIC’s work on soil information globally, as a trustworthy provider of soil information. Regular WDS re-accreditation helps us to review and improve the quality and transparency of our processes as well as services to the international community.

Scientific research to support methodology development

Our scientific research programme contributes to the development of new and innovative methodologies for the generation of soil data and information products. For example, we co-fund a special professorship on ‘Pedometrics and Digital Soil Mapping’ in collaboration with Wageningen University. As such, we regularly supervise PhD candidates . Results of our work are regularly published in high ranking scientific journals.

Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI)

Through the ISRIC Spatial Data Infrastructure we provide access to: (i) a growing range of global information products following FAIR principles, (ii) the soil reference collection and World Soil Museum, and (iii) tools and services developed to support sustainable land management decision making.

Reference Collection and Library

The ISRIC World Soil Reference Collection comprises over 1100 monoliths from 82 countries with supporting morphological and analytical information. The collection was built to show representative examples of the units distinguished in the legend of the FAO-UNESCO Soil Map of the World.. The collection provides a unique resource for education, correlation and research. In conjunction with this, we maintain a library of 10,000 digitized maps and 17,000 reports and books.

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