ISRIC’s expertise spans the entire soil data life cycle—from field sampling and laboratory analysis to data harmonisation, modelling, and publication. With a strong commitment to open science, we contribute to the development and implementation of internationally recognised standards for soil information. The primary aim is to encourage and facilitate FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data and information. This work includes ISRIC’s involvement in standard setting with international communities (World Reference Base, Global Soil Information System (GloSIS)), the implementation of standards in tools such as field description tools; the development of metadata catalogue software; the provisioning of guidance (see examples below), and the operationalisation of the principles in ISRIC’s day to day operations.
Through ISRIC’s involvement in key global networks and working groups (International Union of Soil Science , the Open Geospatial Consortium, the Global Soil Partnership (GSP)), and work in projects, we foster collaboration and capacity strengthening with stakeholders to promote consistent methods and vocabularies for soil description, analysis, and classification (World Reference Base).
Examples are:
The description of the standards, methods and tools available in each step of the Soil Information Workflow through the Soil Information System Review project carried out with CABI, and funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation.
The provision of guidance on soil data assimilation in an open science, open source and FAIR manner through a wiki built in the context of the European Joint Program on Soil (EJP SOIL) programme.
The field description tool for the World Reference Base field description
The implementation and further development, testing and operationalisation of the ISO28258 soil data standard in a PostgresSQL database model.
Contribution to the implementation of the GloSIS domain model developed in the context of the GSP work on global soil data exchange facilitation in a semantic web format.
The continuous improvement of soil vocabularies in the context of projects like EJP SOIL, Soils4Africa, SoilWise, and the deployment of an online soil vocabulary viewer.
Open-source metadata catalogue software with metadata standard harmonisation developed in EJP SOIL, Soils4Africa, Land, Soil and Crop Information Services to support Climate-Smart Agriculture (DeSIRA), and SoilWise projects.
Note: This page is currently being developed.