Forestry England Soils: Polygons with Soil Types and Percentages

Forestry Commission soil classification, developed specifically for silviculture, underpins this geospatial dataset of British forest soils. Each polygon can list up to three distinct soil types with their percentage occurrence, though only the primary soil is identified by name. The data was used within the Ecological Site Classification, a decision support system for British forest management.

Use Cases

• Assessing forest site suitability based on soil drainage and nutrition characteristics.
• Mapping soil variability within forest management units using the multi-soil-per-polygon structure.
• Informing tree species selection and planting strategies via the Ecological Site Classification system.
• Studying the evolution of the Forestry Commission soil classification system over time.

Strengths

• Provides detailed soil composition data, specifying up to three soil types and their percentage occurrence per spatial unit.
• Based on a long-established and widely used classification system (Pyatt, 1982) specifically designed for forestry applications.
• Cross-platform presence (eu_open_data, uk_data) indicates recognized utility and stability.

Limitations

• Critical metadata such as row count, column names, file format, and license are missing from all provided sources.
• Only the primary soil type per polygon is identified by name; secondary and tertiary soils are represented only by codes.
• The stated last update date of 2026-04-07 appears to be a future date, casting doubt on its accuracy.

Provenance

Source

Forestry Commission / Forestry England

Collection Method

Soil survey work using the FC classification system, likely integrated into a GIS.

Freshness

2026-04-07 16:05:12.194080

Geography

England, British Forests