European Soil Database & soil properties

The European Soil Database (ESDB) is an important source of data from many other data and services are derived. For instance, the “European Soil Database v2 Raster Library” contains raster (grid) data files with cell sizes of both 1km x 1km and 10km x 10km for a large number of soil related parameters. The 10km x 10km rasters are in the public domain access and allow expert users to use the data for instance to run soil, water and air related models. The 1km x 1km rasters are available after a prior registration. The grids fit with ideas from INSPIRE to develop “nested” systems for reporting and updating European (soil) data at different scales, according to a hierarchy of grids with a common point of origin and standardized location and size of grid cells.

The European Soil Database (ESDB) contains four discrete datasets which are documented in the ESDB v2.0 CD-ROM:

• the Soil Geographical Database of Eurasia at scale 1:1,000,000 (SGDBE)
• the Pedotransfer Rules Database (PTRDB)
• the Soil Profile Analytical Database of Europa (SPADBE)
• the Database of Hydraulic Properties of European Soils (HYPRES)