ISRIC had already launched a first digital soil information system of Africa in 2013. Now it has launched a more accurate version of the maps, drawing on 18,000 geo-referenced soil profile records from 41 countries from over 450 data sources, ranging from digital databases, books, reports and articles. Meanwhile, AfSIS teams had analysed newly collected topsoil samples from over 9,500 locations using a combination of soil spectroscopy and laboratory analysis. These old and new soil data records, together with a large number of remote-sensing based images of vegetation, climate and terrain relief, were used to estimate the soil properties for the non-desert parts of Africa.

One mouse click on these maps can tell you for instance that Cameroon, Ghana and West Congo have greater than normal levels of organic carbon in the topsoil. Or that the soil along the northern border of South Africa contains only low amounts of organic carbon. "These new maps are more reliable than the first ones, because we have used more soil profile records, more detailed remote sensing images and more advanced statistical methods”, says ISRIC researcher Tom Hengl.