The carbon stock map was established using the Random Forest map based on about 1300 soil samples from the topsoil (A horizon).

The soil group map (soil class) has been made for the Dano catchment. It consists in a shapefile presenting mainly six class of soil groups: Cambisols, Gleysols, Plinthosols, Stagnosols, Leptosols and the Lithosols. A report on the creation of the soil map is available.

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

Soil maps of Benin: Cartes Pédologiques de Reconnaissance (1:200.000), ten sheets digitalized: Abomey, Bimbékéré, Djougou, Kandi, Karimana, Natitingou, Parakou, Porga, Porto-Novo, Save Map for entire Benin. Soil type descriptions are available, please ask S. Giertz. Parameter, Attribute list: soil type. Dataset created by IMPETUS subproject A2. The ten sheets were merged. Seperate sheets are downloadable as well.