ce0c9967-7963-471d-9a2e-3dbc28683ba3 eng UN FAO - HQs Director of Land and Water Division NRL-Director@fao.org 2009-04-17T17:01:25 ISO 19115:2003/19139 1.0 2 21600 0.008333 43200 0.008333 yes GCS_WGS_1984 Harmonized World Soil Database 2009-03-26T00:00:00 Version 1.1 The HWSD is a 30 arc-second raster database with over 16000 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, 19711981). The 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). Acronyms: ESDB - European Soil Database CHINA - China soil map SOTER - Soil and Terrain database SOTWIS - Regional SOTER databases WISE - World Inventory of Soil Emission Potential database DSMW - Digital Soil Map of the World The HWSD is of immediate use in the context of the Climate Change Convention and the Kyoto Protocol for soil carbon measurements and for the FAO/IIASA Global Agro-ecological Assessment study (GAEZ 2008), for which HWSD was developed in the first place. The HWSD contributes sound scientific knowledge for planning sustainable expansion of agricultural production to achieve food security and provides information for national and international policymakers in addressing emerging problems of land competition for food production, bio-energy demand and threats to biodiversity. Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations - HQs Director of Land and Water Division Viale delle Terme di Caracalla Rome 00153 Italy NRL-Director@fao.org Land Use Change and Agriculture Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) (+43 2236) 71 313 Schlossplatz 1 A-2361 Laxenburg Austria HWSD_s.gif thumbnail gif HWSD.gif large_thumbnail gif HWSD SOTER ESD organic Carbon pH water storage capacity soil depth soil cation exchange capacity clay fraction total exchangeable nutrients lime content gypsum content sodium exchange percentage salinity textural class granulometry World 2008-2009 COPYRIGHT FAO, IIASA, ISRIC, ISSCAS, JRC All rights reserved. No part of this Harmonized World Soil Database may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means for resale or other commercial purposes without written permission of the copyright holders. Reproduction and dissemination of material in this information product for educational or other non commercial purposes are authorized without any prior written permission from the copyright holders provided the source is fully acknowledged. Full acknowledgement and referencing of all sources must be included in any documentation using any of the material contained in the Harmonized World Soil Database, as follows: Citation FAO/IIASA/ISRIC/ISSCAS/JRC, 2009. Harmonized World Soil Database (version 1.1). FAO, Rome, Italy and IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria eng geoscientificInformation -180 180 -90 90 Further expansion and update of the HWSD is foreseen for the near future, notably with the excellent databases held in the USA: Natural Resources Conservation Service US General Soil Map (STATSGO) http://www.ncgc.nrcs.usda.gov/products/datasets/statsgo, Canada: Agriculture and AgriFood Canada: The National Soil Database (NSDB) http://sis.agr.gc.ca/cansis/nsdb and Australia: CSIRO, aclep, natural Heritage Trust and National Land and Water Resources Audit: ASRIS http://www.asris.csiro.au/index_other.html. http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/luc07/External-World-soil-database/HTML/index.html WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link Harmonized World Soil Database v 1.1 http://www.iiasa.ac.at WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link IIASA - International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis http://www.fao.org:80/geonetwork/srv/en/resources.get?id=37140&fname=HWSD_RASTER.zip&access=private WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download HWSD_RASTER.zip Raster soil map (Bil file format) http://www.fao.org:80/geonetwork/srv/en/resources.get?id=37140&fname=HWSD.mdb.zip&access=private WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download HWSD.mdb.zip Soil Attribute Database (MS Access) http://www.fao.org:80/geonetwork/srv/en/resources.get?id=37140&fname=HWSD_META.zip&access=private WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download HWSD_META.zip Soil Attribute Database metadata 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 (Central and Southern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe). Last Updated 2008-10-30T15:34:00