The challenges of collating legacy data for digital mapping of Nigerian soils

Digital soil assessments and beyond contains papers presented at the 5th Global Workshop on Digital Soil Mapping, held 10-13 April 2012 at the University of Sydney, Australia. The contributions demonstrate the latest developments in digital soil mapping as a discipline with a special focus on the use of map products to drive policy decisions particularly on climate change and food, water and soil security. The workshop and now this resulting publication have better united formerly disparate subdisciplines in soil science: pedology (study of the formation, distribution and potential use of soils) and pedometrics (quantitative and statistical analysis of soil variation in space and time). This book compiles papers covering a range of topics: digital soil assessment, digital soil modelling, operational soil mapping, soil and environmental covariates, soil sampling and monitoring and soil information modelling, artificial intelligence and cyber-infrastructure, and GlobalSoilMap. Digital soil assessments and beyond aims to encourage new mapping incentives and stimulate new ideas to make digital soil mapping practicable from local to national and ultimately global scales

Africa Soil Profiles Database, Version 1.2

ISRIC World Soil Information is compiling legacy soil profile data of Sub Saharan Africa, as a project activity of the AfSIS project (Globally integrated- Africa Soil Information Service). http://www.africasoils.net/data/legacyprofile The Africa Soil Profiles Database version 1.2 (November 2014) holds 18,532 unique soil profile records of which 17,160 records are georeferenced, including associated soil profile layer attribute data, inventoried and compiled from a wide variety (> 500) of data sources. Soil analytical data are available for 15,564 profiles of which 14,197 are georeferenced. The database includes, but is not limited, to the soil attributes specified by GlobalSoilMap.net. The original attribute values are standardized according to e-SOTER conventions and validated according to routine rules. Odd values are flagged. The degree of validation, and associated reliability of the data, varies because reference soil profile data that are previously and thoroughly validated are compiled together with non-reference soil profile data of lesser inherent representativeness. The profiles are geo-referenced with a median precision of approximately 250m. Details of the data and the data model are described in the associated report. Earlier versions of the dataset, which is continuously updated and growing, have been posted online and are available to the project and the public. The dataset will also be made available through the World Soil Information Service. The current version is released here as version 1.2

Development of global soil information facilities

ISRIC - World Soil Information has a mandate to serve the international community as custodian of global soil information and to increase awareness and understanding of the role of soils in major global issues. To adapt to the current demand for soil information, ISRIC is updating its enterprise data management system, including procedures for registering acquired data, such as lineage, versioning, quality assessment, and control. Data can be submitted, queried, and analysed using a growing range of web-based services - ultimately aiming at full and open exchange of data, metadata, and products - through the ICSU-accredited World Data Centre for Soils