f33dc2e3-4b17-433e-8751-b6dfe6dc8010 Antonio Rogmann Center for Development Research Senior data Manager +49228734904 arogmann@uni-bonn.de 2015-11-13T12:00:52 ISO 19115:2003/19139 1.0 Soil property and class maps of Africa at 250 m 2015-07-06 1 The new maps, commissioned by the Africa Soil Information Services project (AfSIS), are important for studies on agricultural development, environment and food security. In Africa, significant amounts of soil nutrients are lost every year due to land degradation and soil exhaustion. However, improving land management is impossible without local information on soil properties such as sand-silt-clay content, water-holding capacity, or nutrient content. Unfortunately accurate soil information has been difficult to obtain for governments or research institutes, because existing soil profiles records are scattered over many sources. The aim of AfSIS, an international project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is to improve this situation, among others by creating up-to-date digital soil property maps at high spatial resolution. For further information see article: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0125814 Tomislav Hengl ISRIC World Data Center forSoil Researcher http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Persons/Tomislav-Hengl-1.htm Staff member https://wascal-dataportal.org/geonetwork/srv/eng/resources.get?uuid=f33dc2e3-4b17-433e-8751-b6dfe6dc8010&fname=Soiligrid.PNG large_thumbnail PNG soil soil analysis soil chemistry soil fertilisation soil map soil texture soil type GEMET - Concepts, version 2.4 2010-01-13 geonetwork.thesaurus.external.theme.gemet Africa Region 2006-09-22 geonetwork.thesaurus.external.place.regions environment -20.390621942889414 54.14062804673531 -36.02185785125049 35.47021089235469 http://af.soilgrids.org/#/ WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link WebMapService to Africa Soil Grids 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.