Harmonized World Soil Database

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

Simple

Date ( Publication )
2009-03-26T00:00:00
Edition
Version 1.1
Presentation form
Digital map
Purpose

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.
Status
Completed
Owner
Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations (FAO) - ( Director of Land and Water Division )
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla Rome 00153 Italy

Owner
Land Use Change and Agriculture Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Schlossplatz 1 A-2361 Laxenburg Austria

(+43 2236) 71 313
Keywords
  • 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
Keywords ( Place )
  • World
Use limitation
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
Spatial representation type
Grid
Metadata language
eng
Character set
UTF8
Topic category
  • Geoscientific information
N
S
E
W
thumbnail


Supplemental Information

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.

Reference system identifier
GCS_WGS_1984
Number of dimensions
2
Dimension name
Row
Dimension size
21600
Resolution
0.008333  Decimal degrees
Dimension name
Column
Dimension size
43200
Resolution
0.008333  Decimal degrees
Cell geometry
Area
Transformation parameter availability
OnLine resource
Harmonized World Soil Database v 1.1 ( WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link )

Harmonized World Soil Database v 1.1

OnLine resource
IIASA - International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis ( WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link )

IIASA - International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

OnLine resource
HWSD_RASTER.zip ( WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link )

Raster soil map (Bil file format)

OnLine resource
HWSD.mdb.zip ( WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link )

Soil Attribute Database (MS Access)

OnLine resource
HWSD_META.zip ( WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download )

Soil Attribute Database metadata

Hierarchy level
Dataset
Statement
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).
Description
Last Updated
Date / Time
2008-10-30T15:34:00

Metadata

File identifier
47f84065-ee0e-4b22-85e5-b524c5fb98b0 XML
Metadata language
eng
Character set
UTF8
Date stamp
2017-05-02T08:30:52
Metadata standard name
ISO 19115:2003/19139
Metadata standard version
1.0
Point of contact
FAO-UN - Land and Water Division (CBL) - ( )
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla Rome 00153 Italy

 
 

Overviews

overview

Geographic bounding box

N
S
E
W
thumbnail


Keywords


Provided by

Access to the portal

Associated resources

Not available