The World Reference Base (WRB) for Soil Resources

The World Reference Base (WRB) was originally an initiative of FAO and UNESCO, supported by UNEP and the International Society of Soil Science (ISSS) which dates back to 1980. The intention of the project was to work towards the establishment of a framework through which ongoing soil classification could be harmonized. The final objective was to reach international agreement on the major soil groups to be recognized at a global scale as well as on the criteria and methodology to be applied for defining and separating them. Such an agreement was meant to facilitate the exchange of information and experience, to provide a common scientific language, to strengthen the applications of soil science and to enhance the communication with other disciplines.

Several meetings of the ISSS subgroup were held starting in 1982 in New Delhi with unfortunately very little progress being made, until it was realized in 1992, in Montpellier, France, that there was no justification to develop a completely new classification system very different from the Revised Legend published by FAO in 1988. Therefore it was decided that the FAO Revised Legend was to be adopted as the Framework for WRB’s future work and that it would be the task of the working group to further develop its definitions and linkages to the existing FAO units, in order to give them more depth and validity.

The first draft version of WRB was presented at the 16th World Congress of Soil Science at Acapulco, Mexico, and since then it has been subjected to testing on consistency during meetings in Germany (1995), Russia (1996), South Africa (1996), and Argentina (1997). In November 1997, the last meeting was held in Vienna, Austria, and a final text was adopted which was consequently presented at the World Congress of Soil Science in Montpellier, France in August 1998.

Three main organizations were involved in the development of WRB: The International Society for Soil Science (ISSS), The International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

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The Digital Soil Map of the World (DSMW) and Derived Soil Properties

The DSMW (on CD-ROM, Version 3.5, November 1995) is based on the FAO/UNESCO Soil Map of the World, original scale 1:5 000 000. The CD-ROM contains two types of files, DSMW map sheets and derived soil properties files with images derived from the Soil Map of the World.

The Digital Soil Map of the World consists of ten map sheets: Africa, North America, Central America, Europe, Central and Northeast Asia, Far East, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. The maps are available in three different formats: one vector format and two raster formats.

All the maps are in geographic projection, with spherical datum. The coordinates are expressed in degree decimals. The scale of the original map (and the vector-formatted data) is 1:5 000 000.

The Derived Soil Properties files consist of interpretation programs and related data files. Included are programs that interpret the maps in terms of agronomic and environmental parameters such as pH, organic carbon content, C/N ratio, clay mineralogy, soil depth, soil and terrain suitability for specific crop production, soil moisture storage capacity and soil drainage class. Special country analyses can be made for specific soil inventories, problem soils and fertility capability classification for every country in the world. Also included are maps of classification units of the World Soil Reference Base units and topsoil distribution, which can facilitate the teaching of soil science. In addition there is a soil database developed specifically for environmental studies on a global scale, which includes soil moisture storage capacity, soil drainage class and effective soil depth.

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AGRIS

AGRIS is the international bibliographic information system for the agricultural sciences and technology. Since 1975, when the system became operational, AGRIS has accumulated a database of more than 2.7 million references.

Created by FAO to facilitate information exchange, AGRIS identifies world literature dealing with all aspects of agriculture: plant and animal production and protection; post harvest processing of primary agricultural products; forestry; fisheries; agricultural engineering; natural resources and the environment as related to agriculture; food; human nutrition; agricultural economics; rural development; agricultural administration, legislation, information, education and extension.

AGRIS is a cooperative system in which participating countries input references to the literature produced within their boundaries and, in return, draw on the information provided by the other participants.

AGRIS collects bibliographic references to materials which may be either conventional (journal articles, books) or non-conventional (sometimes called "grey literature"), e.g. theses, reports, etc., not available through normal commercial channels. The data forwarded by participating countries is processed in Vienna at the AGRIS Processing unit which is hosted, under contractual agreement, by the Division of Scientific and Technical Information of the IAEA. To date 159 national and 31 international and intergovernmental centres participate and submit about 14.000 items per month.
In order to make the system available to non-English speaking users, FAO and the European Community (EC) developed in the early 1980s a multilingual agricultural vocabulary, AGROVOC. The AGROVOC Thesaurus has been used by AGRIS for indexing and retrieval since 1986. The Third edition of AGROVOC was published in 1996, and a Supplement followed this year. AGROVOC, in English, French and Spanish, is available from FAO's - Publications and Sales, Sales & Marketing Group, Information Division. Other language editions, such as Czech, German, Italian and Portuguese are maintained in the respective national AGRIS centres.

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ECOCROP (1 & 2)  databases

The information in ECOCROP 1 permits the identification of 1710 plant species whose most important climate and soil requirements match the information on soil and climate entered by the user. It also permits the identification of plant species for defined uses. It can be used as a library of crop environmental requirements and it can provide plant species attribute files on crop environmental requirements to be compared with soil and climate maps in Agro-ecological zoning (AEZ) databases or Geographical Information System (GIS) map-based display.

ECOCROP 1 can be used to
- identify suitable crop or tree species for a specified environment
- identify crop or tree species for a defined use
- be a library of crop environmental requirements

The database in ECOCROP 2 is designed as a library of studies on crop responses in relation to environmental and management factors. The programme is created to provide information for crop modelling and at the same time as a tool for scientists to organise and retrieve their own specific information on plant species of interest to them. At present the database holds information on a number of varieties for 20 crops of world-wide importance. Each crop file contains on average 200-220 separate crop environment al response studies or data sets extracted from 40-50 sources.

The ECOCROP databases now form part of the Global Plant and Pest Information System (GPPIS) provides information on more than 11,000 host plants (including uses, ethno-botany, distribution and recorded pests) and on 9,000 pests, detailing each pest's symptoms, ecology, dispersal/vectors, control and distribution. For individual countries, GPPIS returns lists of all pests recorded, single host plants, and pests associated with specific hosts (for pest risk analysis).

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World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT)

WOCAT, launched in 1992, is a project of the World Association of Soil and Water Conservation (WASWC) in collaboration with several institutions and coordinated by the University of Bern, Switzerland. It aims to promote the integration of successful soil and water conservation approaches and techniques into land use systems worldwide.

After a series of international workshops and task force meetings WOCAT developed a framework for the evaluation of soil and water conservation. In early 1995 WOCAT initiated a data collection campaign in collaboration with several institutions and specialists. Questionnaires for collection of soil and water conservation data from the field have been elaborated. Based on these questionnaires, WOCAT aims to obtain insight into elements of soil and water conservation which have been successful under certain conditions, and elements which were considered failures.
 

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