Data and Resources

ISRIC provides a wide range of resources to support research, education, and decision-making related to soils worldwide. As a trusted custodian of both soil samples and soil information, our expertise spans the entire soil data lifecycle—from field sampling and laboratory analysis to data standardisation, storage, modelling, and publication.

ISRIC's flagship global datasets, collections, and knowledge products are designed to make high-quality soil information accessible and usable for scientists, policymakers, and practitioners. By bringing these resources together in one place, ISRIC enables the global community to advance soil science, develop soil information products, build robust soil information systems, and support sustainable land management.

Learn more about our different resources below.

ISRIC provides researchers, policymakers, land managers, and educators with open-access soil resources, including high-quality primary data, geospatial layers, and reference datasets.

The ISRIC’s Soil Data Hub is a large searchable repository of global and regional datasets and layers available in GIS format. Here you can find ISRIC’s flagship products: World Soil Information Service (WoSIS), SoilGrids, Soil and Terrain databases (SOTER), and WISE Soil Property Databases.

While ISRIC collects, standardises and publishes global soil geographic information, there are numerous organisations worldwide that collect and disseminate soil data for their geographies. The third-party digital soil resources portal provides an overview of soil information assets from global to local level, available outside of ISRIC.

Over the past 60 years, ISRIC has built and maintained comprehensive collections bringing together a wealth of soil data from around the world. At the centre of these, is a unique global collection of reference soil profiles from approximately 1,000 sites, detailing morphological, physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the soil. The World Soil Reference Collection includes physical samples such as soil monoliths (preserved sections of the soil profiles), soil profile descriptions and soil sample material. In addition, ISRIC maintains several micromorphological collections, a large soil and landscape images library, and few special soil collections.

The Resource Library provides guidelines, tutorials, and tools to soil professionals for the development of soil information products and systems, covering all steps of the lifecycle of soil information: from soil sampling in the field to dissemination via an information system.

The World Soil Library of Maps and Reports has been building up a collection of around 10,000 (digitised) maps and 17,000 reports and books over the past 60 years. Many of these materials, which were in hard copy, can now be accessed online.