Brazilian Soil Spectral Library: Harmonized Soil Data from 16,084 Sites

16,084 soil sample sites provide harmonized physicochemical and spectral reflectance data (Vis-NIR-SWIR and MIR ranges) at 0-20 cm depth. The Brazilian Soil Spectral Library (BSSL) is an open-access repository coordinated by José Alexandre Melo Demattê of the Universidade de São Paulo and published in 2019. The library consolidates data from 42 institutions and 61 researchers, focusing on diverse tropical soil types.

Use Cases

• Develop predictive models for soil attributes based on spectral reflectance data mentioned in the description.
• Validate soil analysis results by comparing measured data with predicted values from spectral libraries.
• Create digital soil maps for tropical regions using harmonized physicochemical and spectral data.
• Test new spectroscopic models or extract information about unknown soil properties using the curated spectral patterns.

Strengths

• Covers 16,084 distinct soil sample sites, providing a substantial data volume.
• Includes harmonized data from 42 institutions and 61 researchers, suggesting broad collaboration.
• Provides both physicochemical data and spectral reflectance across Vis-NIR-SWIR and MIR ranges for many samples.

Limitations

• Not all soil samples have Middle Infrared (MIR) data, as indicated in the description.
• Row count and file format details are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.

Provenance

Source

Universidade de São Paulo, coordinated by José Alexandre Melo Demattê and the GeoCiS research group.

Collection Method

Consolidation of soil spectral patterns and physicochemical data from various sources, initiated in 1995.

Geography

Brazil, covering diverse tropical soil types.