The aim of the World Soil Information Service (WoSIS) is to serve quality-assessed, geo-referenced soil data (point, polygon, and grid) to the international community upon their standardisation and harmonisation. So far, the focus has been on developing procedures for legacy point data with special attention to the selection of soil analytical and physical properties considered in the GlobalSoilMap specifications (e.g. organic carbon, soil pH, soil texture (sand, silt, and clay), coarse fragments ( greater than 2 mm), cation exchange capacity, electrical conductivity, bulk density, and water holding capacity). Profile data managed in WoSIS were contributed by a wide range of soil data providers; the data have been described, sampled, and analysed according to methods and standards in use in the originating countries. Hence, special attention was paid to measures for soil data quality and the standardisation of soil property definitions, soil property values, and soil analytical method descriptions. At the time of writing, the full WoSIS database contained some 118 400 unique shared soil profiles, of which some 96 000 are geo-referenced within defined limits. In total, this corresponds with over 31 million soil records, of which some 20 % have so far been quality-assessed and standardised using the sequential procedure discussed in this paper. The number of measured data for each property varies between profiles and with depth, generally depending on the purpose of the initial studies. Overall, the data lineage strongly determined which data could be standardised with acceptable confidence in accord with WoSIS procedures, corresponding to over 4 million records for 94 441 profiles. The downloadable ZIP file has the data in TSV (tab separated values). It contains the following files: - ReadmeFirst_WoSIS_2016.pdf (148.1 KB) - wosis_201607_attributes.txt (4.1 KB) - wosis_201607_layers.txt (679.1 MB) - wosis_201607_profiles.txt (8.8 MB) Citation: Batjes NH, Ribeiro E, van Oostrum A, Leenaars J, and Mendes de Jesus J 2016. Standardised soil profile data for the world (WoSIS, July 2016 snapshot), doi:10.17027/isric-wdcsoils.20160003. The dataset accompanies the following data paper: Batjes NH, Ribeiro E, van Oostrum A, Leenaars J, Hengl T, and Mendes de Jesus J 2017. WoSIS: Providing standardised soil profile data for the world, Earth System Science Data 9, 1-14, doi:10.5194/essd-9-1-2017.
Soil moisture content by weight, at tension 1500 kPa (pF 4.2) (g/100g). WoSIS_latest is a 'dynamic dataset' that contains the most recent complement of quality-assessed and standardised soil data served from WoSIS (ISRIC World Soil Information Service). The source data were shared by a wide range of data providers (see: https://www.isric.org/explore/wosis/wosis-contributing-institutions-and-experts). Being dynamic, the contents of 'wosis_latest' will change once new point data are acquired, cleansed and standardised, additional soil properties are considered, and/or when possible amendments are required. Static snapshots of 'wosis_latest' are released at irregular intervals for consistent citation purposes and to discuss methodological changes; the last snapshot is available at https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-4735-2024. For general information about WoSIS please see the FAQ-page at https://www.isric.org/explore/wosis/faq-wosis.
ABSTRACT: The World Soil Information Service (WoSIS) provides quality-assessed and standardized soil profile data to support digital soil mapping and environmental applications at broad scale levels. Since the release of the ‘WoSIS snapshot 2019’ many new soil data were shared with us, registered in the ISRIC data repository, and subsequently standardized in accordance with the licenses specified by the data providers. The source data were contributed by a wide range of data providers, therefore special attention was paid to the standardization of soil property definitions, soil analytical procedures and soil property values (and units of measurement). We presently consider the following soil chemical properties (organic carbon, total carbon, total carbonate equivalent, total Nitrogen, Phosphorus (extractable-P, total-P, and P-retention), soil pH, cation exchange capacity, and electrical conductivity) and physical properties (soil texture (sand, silt, and clay), bulk density, coarse fragments, and water retention), grouped according to analytical procedures (aggregates) that are operationally comparable. For each profile we provide the original soil classification (FAO, WRB, USDA, and version) and horizon designations as far as these have been specified in the source databases. Three measures for 'fitness-for-intended-use' are provided: positional uncertainty (for site locations), time of sampling/description, and a first approximation for the uncertainty associated with the operationally defined analytical methods. These measures should be considered during digital soil mapping and subsequent earth system modelling that use the present set of soil data. DATA SET DESCRIPTION: The 'WoSIS 2023 snapshot' comprises data for 228k profiles from 217k geo-referenced sites that originate from 174 countries. The profiles represent over 900k soil layers (or horizons) and over 6 million records. The actual number of measurements for each property varies (greatly) between profiles and with depth, this generally depending on the objectives of the initial soil sampling programmes. The data are provided in TSV (tab separated values) format and as GeoPackage. The zip-file (446 Mb) contains the following files: - Readme_WoSIS_202312_v2.pdf: Provides a short description of the dataset, file structure, column names, units and category values (this file is also available directly under 'online resources'). The pdf includes links to tutorials for downloading the TSV files into R respectively Excel. See also 'HOW TO READ TSV FILES INTO R AND PYTHON' in the next section. - wosis_202312_observations.tsv: This file lists the four to six letter codes for each observation, whether the observation is for a site/profile or layer (horizon), the unit of measurement and the number of profiles respectively layers represented in the snapshot. It also provides an estimate for the inferred accuracy for the laboratory measurements. - wosis_202312_sites.tsv: This file characterizes the site location where profiles were sampled. - wosis_2023112_profiles: Presents the unique profile ID (i.e. primary key), site_id, source of the data, country ISO code and name, positional uncertainty, latitude and longitude (WGS 1984), maximum depth of soil described and sampled, as well as information on the soil classification system and edition. Depending on the soil classification system used, the number of fields will vary . - wosis_202312_layers: This file characterises the layers (or horizons) per profile, and lists their upper and lower depths (cm). - wosis_202312_xxxx.tsv : This type of file presents results for each observation (e.g. “xxxx” = “BDFIOD” ), as defined under “code” in file wosis_202312_observation.tsv. (e.g. wosis_202311_bdfiod.tsv). - wosis_202312.gpkg: Contains the above datafiles in GeoPackage format (which stores the files within an SQLite database). HOW TO READ TSV FILES INTO R AND PYTHON: A) To read the data in R, please uncompress the ZIP file and specify the uncompressed folder. setwd("/YourFolder/WoSIS_2023_December/") ## For example: setwd('D:/WoSIS_2023_December/') Then use read_tsv to read the TSV files, specifying the data types for each column (c = character, i = integer, n = number, d = double, l = logical, f = factor, D = date, T = date time, t = time). observations = readr::read_tsv('wosis_202312_observations.tsv', col_types='cccciid') observations ## show columns and first 10 rows sites = readr::read_tsv('wosis_202312_sites.tsv', col_types='iddcccc') sites profiles = readr::read_tsv('wosis_202312_profiles.tsv', col_types='icciccddcccccciccccicccci') profiles layers = readr::read_tsv('wosis_202312_layers.tsv', col_types='iiciciiilcc') layers Do this for each observation 'XXXX', e.g. file 'Wosis_202312_orgc.tsv': orgc = readr::read_tsv('wosis_202312_orgc.tsv', col_types='iicciilccdccddccccc') orgc Note: One may also use the following R code (example is for file 'observations.tsv'): observations <- read.table("wosis_202312_observations.tsv", sep = "\t", header = TRUE, quote = "", comment.char = "", stringsAsFactors = FALSE ) B) To read the files into python first decompress the files to your selected folder. Then in python: import the required library import pandas as pd Read the observations data observations = pd.read_csv("wosis_202312_observations.tsv", sep="\t") # print the data frame header and some rows observations.head() Read the sites data sites = pd.read_csv("wosis_202312_sites.tsv", sep="\t") Read the profiles data profiles = pd.read_csv("wosis_202312_profiles.tsv", sep="\t") Read the layers data layers = pd.read_csv("wosis_202312_layers.tsv", sep="\t") Read the soil property data, e.g. 'cfvo' (do this for each observation) cfvo = pd.read_csv("wosis_202312_cfvo.tsv", sep="\t") CITATION: Calisto, L., de Sousa, L.M., Batjes, N.H., 2023. Standardised soil profile data for the world (WoSIS snapshot – December 2023), https://doi.org/10.17027/isric-wdcsoils-20231130 Supplement to: Batjes N.H., Calisto, L. and de Sousa L.M., 2023. Providing quality-assessed and standardised soil data to support global mapping and modelling (WoSIS snapshot 2023). Earth System Science Data, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-4735-2024.
Soil moisture content by volume, at tension 500 kPa (pF 3.7) (cm³/100cm³). WoSIS_latest is a 'dynamic dataset' that contains the most recent complement of quality-assessed and standardised soil data served from WoSIS (ISRIC World Soil Information Service). The source data were shared by a wide range of data providers (see: https://www.isric.org/explore/wosis/wosis-contributing-institutions-and-experts). Being dynamic, the contents of 'wosis_latest' will change once new point data are acquired, cleansed and standardised, additional soil properties are considered, and/or when possible amendments are required. Static snapshots of 'wosis_latest' are released at irregular intervals for consistent citation purposes and to discuss methodological changes; the last snapshot is available at https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-4735-2024. For general information about WoSIS please see the FAQ-page at https://www.isric.org/explore/wosis/faq-wosis.
The World Soil Information Service (WoSIS) provides quality-assessed and standardised soil profile data to support digital soil mapping and environmental applications at broad scale levels. Since the release of the first ‘WoSIS snapshot’, in July 2016, many new soil data were shared with us, registered in the ISRIC data repository, and subsequently standardised in accordance with the licences specified by the data providers. Soil profile data managed in WoSIS were contributed by a wide range of data providers, therefore special attention was paid to measures for soil data quality and the standardisation of soil property definitions, soil property values (and units of measurement), and soil analytical method descriptions. We presently consider the following soil chemical properties (organic carbon, total carbon, total carbonate equivalent, total Nitrogen, Phosphorus (extractable-P, total-P, and P-retention), soil pH, cation exchange capacity, and electrical conductivity) and physical properties (soil texture (sand, silt, and clay), bulk density, coarse fragments, and water retention), grouped according to analytical procedures (aggregates) that are operationally comparable. Further, for each profile, we provide the original soil classification (FAO, WRB, USDA, and version) and horizon designations insofar as these have been specified in the source databases. Measures for geographical accuracy (i.e. location) of the point data as well as a first approximation for the uncertainty associated with the operationally defined analytical methods are presented, for possible consideration in digital soil mapping and subsequent earth system modelling. The present snapshot, referred to as ‘WoSIS snapshot - September 2019’, comprises 196,498 geo-referenced profiles originating from 173 countries. They represent over 832 thousand soil layers (or horizons), and over 6 million records. The actual number of observations for each property varies (greatly) between profiles and with depth, this generally depending on the objectives of the initial soil sampling programmes. The downloadable ZIP file has the data in TSV (tab separated values) and GeoPackage format. It contains the following files: - ReadmeFirst_WoSIS_2019dec04.pdf (546.7 KB) - wosis_201909.gpkg (2.2 GB, same data as in the tsv) - wosis_201909_attributes.tsv (8.7 KB) - wosis_201909_layers_chemical.tsv (893.5 MB) - wosis_201909_layers_physical.tsv (890.7 MB) - wosis_201909_profiles.tsv (18.8 MB) To read the data in R, please, uncompress the ZIP file and specify the uncompressed folder. Then use read_tsv to read the TSV files, specifying the data types for each column (c = character, i = integer, n = number, d = double, l = logical, f = factor, D = date, T = date time, t = time). setwd("/YourFolder/WoSIS_2019_September/") attributes = readr::read_tsv('wosis_201909_attributes.tsv', col_types='cccciicd') profiles = readr::read_tsv('wosis_201909_profiles.tsv', col_types='icccdddiicccciccccicccc') chemical = readr::read_tsv('wosis_201909_layers_chemical.tsv', col_types='iiddclcdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccc') physical = readr::read_tsv('wosis_201909_layers_physical.tsv', col_types='iiddclcdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccccdccccc') For more detailed instructions on how to read the data with R, please visit https://www.isric.org/accessing-wosis-using-r. Citation: Batjes N.H, Ribeiro E, and van Oostrum A.J.M, 2019. Standardised soil profile data for the world (WoSIS snapshot - September 2019), https://doi.org/10.17027/isric-wdcsoils.20190901. The dataset accompanies the following data paper: Batjes N.H., Ribeiro E., and van Oostrum A.J.M., 2019. Standardised soil profile data to support global mapping and modelling (WoSIS snapshot - 2019). Earth System Science Data, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-299-2020.