Share your soil data and resources with ISRIC

Sharing your soil data helps improve the quality and availability of soil information products worldwide!

We welcome the following data and materials:

As World Data Centre for Soils, ISRIC is committed to serving the international community with quality-assessed soil information. ISRIC adheres to internationally recognised standards for the development, storage and dissemination of soil data. To improve the quality, coverage, and usefulness of our open global data products, such as WoSIS and SoilGrids, we rely on soil data contributions from third-parties. That is why ISRIC offers the opportunity for individuals and organisations to share their soil data with us, to help strengthen soil knowledge and support sustainable development worldwide.

Why share your dataset with ISRIC?

• You can contribute to a global public good. Data enhances the quality of the global soil information products, increasing understanding of soil quality and helping to improve sustainable land management.

• Your dataset is in safe hands. Once shared, it will be securely stored and always accessible to you and your organisation. You will no longer need to manage the storage yourself. ISRIC can also help integrate, visualise, and disseminate your data online , whilst assigning a digital object identifier (DOI) and ensuring proper credit and recognition of the data.

Data held in ISRIC’s repository will never be shared with third parties without your explicit consent. You will remain the owner of your data and retain full control of how it is used.

If you choose to share your data with ISRIC, it is important that your dataset includes any existing data sharing licence. If your data does not yet have a licence, ISRIC can assist you in selecting or creating one. The chosen license defines who, including ISRIC, can access your data and for what purposes, including the option to restrict sharing entirely. ISRIC respects and strictly adheres to the terms of any licence you provide.

Depending on the quality of your data and metadata, and the data sharing permissions defined in the data license, ISRIC will consider whether to incorporate your dataset into WoSIS. Once your dataset is included in WoSIS, a DOI will be assigned, making your dataset unique, findable and citable in publications. You will also be assigned a dashboard and a download link for your data. You will be acknowledged as a data contributor on the WoSIS contribution page as well.

ISRIC’s institutional soil database WoSIS contains a standardised set of over 230.000 geo-referenced soil profiles and is widely used for the development of global, regional and local digital soil maps and other types of soil assessments. Numerous parties have contributed their soil data to ISRIC, yet significant geographical, thematical and temporal gaps remain. By incorporating your dataset into WoSIS, you help improve the quality of numerous soil information products worldwide, including ISRIC's own global soil mapping product SoilGrids.

Add value and make an impact by sharing your soil datasets with a trusted global soil data provider!

If you are interested in sharing your soil data, or want to learn more, please contact us.

Learn more about our Data and Software Policy.

The World Soil Library houses over 27,000 soil information resources, including maps, reports and books, most of which are accessible online. Many of these resources have been scanned and are available for download, with ongoing efforts to digitise the remaining documents and soil maps.

ISRIC’s World Soil Library focusses on unique resources that are not typically found in standard libraries. Soil maps and reports are the end-product of soil surveys, which are often expensive and time-consuming activities. These are often ‘grey literature’, meaning they are not distributed by a (commercial) publisher and are commonly available in limited print. As a result, these resources tend to become inaccessible over time or even be completely lost. Therefore, the archiving, digitising and online disclosure of soil survey reports and maps is important.

If you have soil-related resources—such as soil maps, reports, or books—that you would like to contribute, please contact us. Your contributions will be securely preserved and made accessible to you and the international soil community.