Blog entries filtered by: Agroecology, Soil Resources

Mapping the global extent of soil constraints to crop growth plays an important role in developing strategies for agricultural production, environmental protection, and sustainable development at regional and global scales. The most widely used dataset is the Soil Fertility Capability Classification System (FCC) developed by Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) and the Tropical Agriculture Program of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. HarvestChoice facilitated developing an updated version of FCC using the Harmonized World Soil Database v1.1. This new dataset will play a key role in HarvestChoice's forthcoming flagship study on the biophysical/economic impact assessment of agricultural production constraints in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In August, we posted a new collection of more than 3,400 soil profiles that are converted/formatted for crop model applications, based on the WISE 1.1 Soil Profile Database. Utilizing this new soil profiles, as described in the post, we anticipate crop modeling studies to expand their coverage areas even to the locations where no soil measurement data was previously available. For the questions of exactly how, here is a quick example application that can help you find the one(s).

As an appendix to the Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD) v1.1, seven soil indicators have been published globally, at 5 arc-minute (10 km) resolution.

Through the collaboration with HarvestChoice, a team of scientists at the Universities of Georgia and Florida converted 3,404 soil profiles from the World Soil Information (ISRIC) WISE Global Soil Profile Database v1.1 to the DSSAT-compatible format.