The Global Soil Data Task was an international collaborative project with the objective of making accurate and appropriate data relating to soil properties accessible to the global change research community. The collaborators are holders of major international pedosphere data sets, such as the United States Dept of Agriculture, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the International Soil Reference and Information Centre, as well as national soils institutes, individual soil scientists, and users of soil data. The task was coordinated by the Data and Information System framework activity of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP-DIS).The task assembled a reliable and accessible data set on pedosphere properties on a global scale. The data are sufficiently detailed to support rigorous analysis, and accessible to and understandable by soil scientists and non-soil scientists alike. The immediate goal was to supply pedosphere information to global change researchers, but the unification and distribution of the existing soils data bases will be of great benefit to all researchers, not only those directly involved in global change studies. The task was enabled by the active participation of the principal international custodians of pedosphere data.

This CD contains three groups of products:1. The Global Pedon Database consists of data records from actual soil profiles selected from around the world. You can browse the data, search it, and export it in ASCII format. It was developed by ISRIC, using data from ISIS, FAO and the USDA.2. The FAO Interpreted Surfaces are global surfaces, at 5'x5' resolution, of organic carbon, soil water capacity and easily available water capacity. These have been interpreted and spatially mapped using a combination of base data and field experience by soil experts. You can view and export from them in IDRISI format. The surfaces were developed by FAO.3. The SoilData System uses a statistical bootstrapping approach to link the pedon records in the Global Pedon Database to the FAO Soil Map of the World. It can generate maps and output datasets for a range of original and derived soil parameters, for any part of the world, at any resolution (in increments of 5'), for user-selected depth ranges.