Global Soil Data Products with Derived Carbon and Nutrient Surfaces

Global data on soil properties and maps are provided by the SoilData System from the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme Data and Information System (IGBP-DIS). The dataset includes derived surfaces for carbon density, nutrient status, water-holding capacity, and heat capacity. It was originally distributed on CD-ROM and is now available as a single zip file containing multiple formats.

Use Cases

• Modeling global carbon density using derived carbon surfaces.
• Assessing soil nutrient status for agricultural or ecological studies.
• Estimating water-holding capacity for hydrological modeling.
• Generating custom soil property maps for specific geographic regions via the SoilData System.
• Analyzing soil heat capacity for climate or energy balance models.

Strengths

• Provides derived surfaces for key soil properties like carbon density and water-holding capacity.
• Offers global spatial coverage for soil distributions and properties.
• Allows user-defined generation of soil information for specific regions, depths, and resolutions.

Limitations

• Conflicting last updated dates exist: one source states 2026-03-13, another states 1996-12-31, suggesting potential metadata errors or static legacy data.
• Specific row counts, column names, and dataset size are unknown across all sources.
• Original data distribution method (CD-ROM) indicates it may be a historical dataset.

Provenance

Source

International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme Data and Information System (IGBP-DIS), distributed by ORNL_CLOUD on NASA EarthData.

Collection Method

Originally distributed on CD-ROM; data provided as a single zip file containing HTML, PDF, PNG, BIN, ISO, and TEXT files.

Freshness

2026-03-13 02:07:33.371636

Geography

Global