Harmonised world soil database
(HWSD)

Name: Harmonised world soil database
Published: 2008-06-01

30 arc-second grid database with over 16,000 different soil mapping units that combines existing regional and national updates of soil information worldwide (SOTER, ESD, Soil Map of China, WISE) with the information contained within the 1:5,000,000 scale FAO-UNESCO Soil Map of the World (FAO, 1971-1981). The resulting raster database consists of 21600 rows and 43200 columns, which are linked to harmonized soil property data. The use of a standardized structure allows for the linkage of the attribute data with the raster map to display or query the composition in terms of soil units and the characterization of selected soil parameters (organic Carbon, pH, water storage capacity, soil depth, cation exchange capacity of the soil and the clay fraction, total exchangeable nutrients, lime and gypsum contents, sodium exchange percentage, salinity, textural class and granulometry).

Publication date: 2008-06-01

Formats

MS Access database (.mdb)
Band interleaved by line (.BIL)

Spatial information

Study area
Spatial representation type: Raster
Spatial reference system: WGS 84 longitude-latitude (CRS:84)

Temporal information

Temporal extent: 1950-01-01 to 2003-12-03

Provenance & quality

The data set's lineage is described in: FAO/IIASA/ISRIC/ISSCAS/JRC 2012. Harmonized World Soil Database (version 1.2), Prepared by Nachtergaele FO, van Velthuizen H, Verelst L and Wiberg D. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), ISRIC - World Soil Information, Institute of Soil Science - Chinese Academy of Sciences (IISCAS), Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC), Laxenburg, Austria (http://webarchive.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/External-World-soil-database/HWSD_Documentation.pdf).
Reliability of the information contained in the database is variable: the parts of the database that still make use of the Soil Map of the World such as North America, Australia, West Africa and South Asia are considered less reliable, while most of the areas covered by SOTER databases are considered to have the highest reliability (Southern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe).

Other contacts

Publisher: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Originator: FAO, IIASA, ISRIC, ISSCAS, JRC

Additional metadata

Topic categories: geoscientificInformation
Keywords: Geospatial / Map , National , Soil , Tabular
Last updated: 30 January 2017 16:13

Harmonised world soil database (HWSD)