Harmonized World Soil Database
Version 1.1
March 2009
Coordination
Freddy Nachtergaele
1
, Harrij van Velthuizen
2
, Luc Verelst
2,
Contributors
Niels Batjes
3
, Koos Dijkshoorn
3
, Vincent van Engelen
3
, Guenther Fischer
2
, Arwyn Jones
5
,
Luca Montanarella
5
, Monica Petri ,
1
Sylvia Prieler
2
, Edmar Teixeira
2
, David Wiberg
2
,
Xuezheng Shi
4
1
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO),
2
International Institute for Applied
Systems Analysis (IIASA),
3
ISRIC-World Soil Information ‘
4
Institute of Soil Science – Chinese
Academy of Sciences (ISSCAS),
5
Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC)
DISCLAIMER
The designations employed and the presentation of materials in Harmonized World Soil Database do
not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO) the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
(IIASA), ISRIC-World Soil Information, Institute of Soil Science – Chinese Academy of Sciences
(ISSCAS) or Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) concerning the legal status of
any country, territory, city or area or its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or
boundaries.
© 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:
FAO/IIASA/ISRIC/ISS-CAS/JRC, 2009. Harmonized World Soil Database (version 1.1). FAO, Rome,
Italy and IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria.
The most recent updates of the HWSD can be found at the
HWSD Website:
Cover art by Anka James, IIASA.
Harmonized World Soil Database (version 1.1)
i
Foreword
Soil information, from the global to the local scale, has often been the one missing
biophysical information layer, the absence of which has added to the uncertainties of
predicting potentials and constraints for food and fiber production. The lack of reliable and
harmonized soil data has considerably hampered land degradation assessments,
environmental impact studies and adapted sustainable land management interventions.
Recognizing the urgent need for improved soil information worldwide, particularly in the
context of the Climate Change Convention and the Kyoto Protocol for soil carbon
measurements and the immediate requirement for the FAO/IIASA Global Agro-ecological
Assessment study (GAEZ 2008), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) took the
initiative of combining the recently collected vast volumes of regional and national updates of
soil information with the information already contained within the 1:5,000,000 scale FAO-
UNESCO Digital Soil Map of the World, into a new comprehensive Harmonized World Soil
Database (HWSD).
This state-of-the-art database was achieved in partnership with:
• ISRIC-World Soil Information together with FAO, which were responsible for the
developmen
t of regional soil and terrain databases and the WISE soil profile database;
• the European Soil Bureau Network, which had recently completed a major update of soil
information for Europe and northern
Eurasia, and
• the Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences which provided the recent
1:1,000,000
scale Soil Map of China.
The completion of this comprehensive harmonized so
il information database will improve
estimation of current and future land potential productivity, help identify land and water
limitations, and enhance assessing risks of land degradation, particularly soil erosion. The
HWSD contributes sound scientific knowledge for planning sustainable expansion of
agricultural production and for guiding policies to address emerging land competition issues
concerning food production, bio-energy demand and threats to biodiversity. This is of critical
importance for rational natural resource management and in making progress towards
achieving Millennium Development goals of eradicating hunger and poverty and addressing
the food security and sustainable agricultural development, especially with regard to the
threats of global climate change and the needs for adaptation and mitigation.
This digitized and online accessible soil information system will allow policy makers, planners
and experts to overco
me some of the shortfalls of data availability to address the old
challenges of food production and food security and plan for new challenges of climate
change and accelerated natural resources degradation.
Alexander Julius Müller Sten Nilsson.
Assistant Director General Acting Director
Natural Resources Management and
Environmen
t Department
International Institute for Applied Systems
Analysis
Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations
FAO, Rome, June, 2008 IIASA, Laxenburg, June, 2008
Harmonized World Soil Database (version 1.1)
ii
Harmonized World Soil Database
1. INTRODUCTION 1
2. THE HARMONIZED WORLD SOIL DATABASE 2
2.1 Source databases 2
2.2 Database Contents 3
2.3 Field descriptions 5
2.3.1
Soil Mapping Unit Identifiers 6
2.3.2
Soil unit naming 7
2.3.3 Soil
Phases 9
2.3.4 Soil
properties 11
3. HARMONIZATION OF THE DATABASES 17
3.1 The Attribute databases 17
3.1.1 Ran
ge checks 17
3.1.2 Missing
Data 17
3.1.3 Re
coding 17
3.1.4
Data measurement units 18
3.1.5
The SHARE and SEQUENCE fields 18
3.1.6 Sum
of soil components 18
3.1.7 Link b
etween attribute database and spatial data 18
3.2 Spatial data 19
I. ANNEX 1 CONTRIBUTING MAJOR DATABASES 21
I.1 The Soil Map of the World and the Soil and Terrain (SOTER)
database developments 21
I.2 The European Soil Bureau Network and the Soil Geographical
Database for Europe 22
1.3 Soil Map of China 22
1.4 Soil parameter data based on the World Inventory of
Soil Emission Potential (WISE) database 23
II. ANNEX 2 SOIL UNITS 24
II.1 Soil Units in the Revised Legend of the Soil Map of the World (FAO90) 24
II.2 Soil Units used for the unified vector map 26
II.3 Soil Units in the Legend of the Soil Map of the World (FAO74) 27
III. ANNEX 3 USE OF THE HWSD IN GIS SOFTWARE 28
III.1 Technical specifications 28
III.2 Loading the data in ArcView and ArcGIS 29
IV. ANNEX 4: THE HWSD VIEWER
30
IV.1 Introduction 30
IV.2 System Requirements 30
IV.3 Installation 30
IV.4 First use of the Viewer 31
IV.5 Operation of the HWSD-V 31
IV.5.1 Basic operations 31
IV.5.2 Manipulating the Legend 32
IV.5.3 Adding shape file overlays 32
IV.6 Accessing attribute data 32
IV.7 The HWSD query Tool 34
IV.8 Preferences 34
IV.9 Loading other database versions 35
References 36
Harmonized World Soil Database (version 1.1)
iii
Harmonized World Soil Database
1. INTRODUCTION
In the context of a complete update of the global agro-ecological zones study, FAO and IIASA
recognized that there was an urgent need to combine existing regional and national updates of soil
information worldwide and incorporate these with the information contained within the 1:5 000 000
scale FAO-UNESCO Soil Map of the World (
FAO, 1971-1981), which was in large parts no longer
reflecting the actual state of the soil resources. In order to do this, partnerships were sought with the
ISRIC – World Soil Information who had been largely responsible for the development of regional
Soil and Terrain databases (Sombroek, 1984) and with the European Soil Bureau Network (ESBN)
who had undertaken a major update of soil information for Europe and northern Eurasia in recent
years (ESB, 2004). The incorporation of the 1:1,000,000 scale Soil Map of China (Shi et al., 2004)
was an essential addition obtained through the cooperation with the Institute of Soil Science, Chinese
Academy of Sciences. In order to estimate soil properties in a harmonized way, the use of actual soil
profile data and the development of pedotransfer rules was undertaken in cooperation with ISRIC and
ESBN drawing on the WISE soil profile database and earlier work of Batjes et al. (1997; 2002) and
Van Ranst et al.(1995)..
The harmonization and data entry in a GIS was assured at the International Institute for Applied
System
Analysis (IIASA) and verification of the database was undertaken by all partners. As the
product has as its main aim to be of practical use to modelers and is to serve perspective studies in
agro-ecological zoning, food security and climate change impacts (among others) a resolution of about
1 km (30 arc seconds by 30 arc seconds) was selected
1
. The resulting raster database consists of 21600
rows and 43200 columns, of which 221 million grid cells cover the globe’s land territory.
Over 16000 different soil mapping units are recognized in the Harmonized World Soil Database
(HWSD). wh
ich are linked to harm
onized attribute data. Use of a standardized structure allows linkage
of the attribute data with GIS 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).
Reliability of the information presented here is variable: the parts of the database that still m
a
ke use of
the Soil Map of the World such as North America, Australia, West Africa (excluding Senegal and
Gambia) and South Asia are considered less reliable, while most of the areas covered by SOTER
databases are considered to have the highest reliability (Southern and Eastern Africa, Latin America
and the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe).
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 Agri-
Food 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
, and with the recently released SOTER database for
Central Africa (FAO/ISRIC/University Gent, 2007).
The database content is discussed in Chapter 2 and the har
monization process in Chapter 3. Annex 1
gives a historical overview of the development of the Soil Map of the World, the Soil and Terrain
Databases (SOTER), the Geographic Database for Europe, the Soil Map of China, and ISRIC-WISE
database, while Annex 2 to 4 give detailed instructions on how to use the GIS software and the viewer.
1
Note: Original data were mapped respectively at scales of 1:5,000,000 for the Soil Map of the World and
between 1:1,000,000 and 1:5,000,000 for the various SOTER regional studies and 1:1,000,000 the European Soil
Map and the Soil Map of China. The pixel size has been selected to ensure compatibility with important
inventories such as the slope and aspect database (based on 90 m resolution SRTM data) and GLC 2000/2005
land cover data available at 30 arc seconds. The HWSD by necessity presents therefore multiple grid cells with
identical attributes occurring in individual soil mapping units as provided on the original vector maps.
Harmonized World Soil Database (version 1.1)
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