Privacy statement | Legal notice | Contact | Search
European Commission > Joint Research Centre > Institute for Environment and Sustainability > Land Resource Management Unit

Soil Datasets > Data > European Soil Database > Raster Library 1kmx1km

For the convenience of the potential user, a number of 1kmx1km raster data sets derived from the European Soil Database (ESDB) v2.0 have been prepared and are now freely available to the public.

It is stressed that these rasters are an interpretation of the data contained in the ESDB v2.0

The basis for these data is the European Soil Database v2.0, which is fully documented here. Below is the documentation on the ESDB v2 - Raster Library 1kmx1km.

Access to the data:

In order to obtain access to the raster data : Fill in the online form; after which you will receive further instructions on how to access the data.


The ESDB v2 - 1kmx1km Raster Library (Documentation) - "dominant value" and "dominant STU" Rasters

This library contains raster (or grid) data files (in native ESRI GRID format) for most attributes (73 in total) of the SGDBE and PTRDB databases of the ESDB v2.0; cell sizes are 1km x 1km and the grid is aligned with the reference grid recommended during the 1st Workshop on European Reference Grids in the context of the INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) initiative. (Workshop proceedings).

The grids are in the ETRS89 Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area (ETRS_LAEA) co-ordinate system, also documented in the workshop proceedings.

The grid origin is defined 4.321.000,0 m west of the projection centre point (52N, 10 E), and 3.210.000,0 m south of projection centre point (52N 10 E). The grid extent is such that it covers all EU25 countries. Width : 7.500.000,0 m ; Height : 5.500.00,0 m ; 7500 columns, 5500 rows.

Raster values have been derived using the "features to raster" tool in the Spatial Analyst extension of ArcGIS, the feature layer being a shapefile created from the SGDBE geometrical database to which attributes from SGDBE and PTRDB have been linked according to the "dominant value" principle for the "dominant value" rasters and the "dominant STU" principle for the "dominant STU" rasters (see here for an introduction of soil map visualization).

The 1km x 1km raster attributes correspond to the attributes represented in the maps of the European Soil Data Base Map Archive (published on Soil Portal ) as "a collection of maps which represent all attributes which are present in the in the Soil Geographical Database of Eurasia at scale 1:1,000,000 (version 4 beta) and the PedoTransfer Rules Data Base(version 2.0). Type of Document: PDF, Format: A3",

The file Description of raster layers explains the names of all the rasters ;

The file SGDBE rasters attributes classes : lists possible attribute values for SGDBE derived rasters ;

The file PTRDB rasters attributes classes : lists possible attribute values for PTRDB derived rasters.

More documentation on the Pedo-transfer rules/attributes of the European Soil Database can be found in A Geographical Knowledge Database on Soil Properties for Environmental Studies

 

Explanation about the Data :

"dominant value" raster data for 73 attributes and "dominant STU" raster data for 59 attributes are offered as native ESRI GRIDs formatted as zip files, one file for each raster (or parameter). A zip file called <X>_directory (for "dominant value") or <X>_directory_dom_stu (for "dominant STU") for parameter <X> contains 3 elements :

The size of the zip files varies between 3 and 10 MB ; unzipped from 10 to 40 MB. Note that the following 14 attributes were not retained among the "dominant STU" rasters :

For the convenience of the user also the following data are available in the other_data.zip file (zipped: 10 MB; unzipped 74MB):

 

European Soil Database: Other Data Resources

 

Important legal notice
© European Communities, 1995-
Last updated:

European Commission - Joint Research Centre
Institute for Environment and Sustainability
Contacts:
Marc Van Liedekerke(tel. +39-0332-785179)
Panos Panagos (tel. +39-0332-785574)