Research Guides: Soil Science: Datasets, Data Series, Data Repositories, Data Systems

Datasets, Data Series, Data Repositories, Data Systems

The UC Davis DataLab and Library’s Researcher Services department provide Research Data Services and are happy to assist with your data questions. See this extensive resource webpage:

Research Data Services

Below are data resources and tools including some that are directly related to soil science.

Data Citation Index This link opens in a new window
Indexes research data sets and data studies from a wide range of international data repositories in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Discover research data connected to articles published in journals, books, and conference proceedings. Links directly to data repositories for easy access to the deposited data sets. Includes two disciplinary sections: Science (1900-present); Social Sciences & Humanities (1900-present).
[Coverage: 1900 - current]
Dryad This link opens in a new window
Dryad is an open-source, research data curation and publication platform. UC Davis is a proud partner of Dryad and offers Dryad as a free service for all UC Davis researchers to publish and archive their data. Datasets published in Dryad receive a citation and can be versioned at any time. Dryad is integrated with hundreds of journals and is an easy way to both publish data and comply with funder and publisher mandates.
JDAP (Joint Data Archiving Policy)

Soil Properties Data Set in the United States (Jan 2021)
“ e dataset consists of three raster GeoTIFF files describing the following soil properties in the US: available water capacity, field capacity, and soil porosity. The input data were obtained from the gridded National Soil Survey Geographic (gNATSGO) Database and the Gridded Soil Survey Geographic (gSSURGO) Database with Soil Data Development tools provided by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. The soil characteristics derived from the databases were Available Water Capacity (AWC), Water Content (one-third bar) (WC), and Bulk Density (one-third bar) (BD) aggregated as weighted average values in the upper 1 m of soil. AWC and WC layers were converted to mm/m to express respectively available water capacity and field capacity in 1 m of soil, and BD layer was used to produce soil porosity raster assuming that the average particle density of soils is equal to 2.65 g/cm3. For each soil property, soil maps with CONUS, Alaska, and Hawaii geographic coverages were derived from separate databases and combined into one file. To replace no data values within a raster, we used data values statistically derived from neighboring cell values. The final product is provided in a GeoTIFF format and therefore can be easily integrated into raster-based models requiring estimates of soil characteristics in the US.”
World Soil Information
Soil class and property information from more than 100,000 soil profiles worldwide, compiled and harmonized by the International Soil Reference and Information Centre for over 50 years. Online access to 8,000 maps and 15,000 reports and books, digitized from what may be the world’s largest library on soils.
Ag Data Commons
The Ag Data Commons is a public, government, scientific research data catalog and repository available to help the agricultural research community share and discover research data funded by the United States Department of Agriculture.
Climate Data Online
National Centers for Environmental Information, NOAA. “Climate Data Online (CDO) provides free access to NCDC's archive of global historical weather and climate data in addition to station history information. These data include quality controlled daily, monthly, seasonal, and yearly measurements of temperature, precipitation, wind, and degree days as well as radar data and 30-year Climate Normals.”

DataONE (Data Observation Network for Earth) This link opens in a new window
DataONE serves "as a distributed framework and sustainable cyberinfrastructure that meets the needs of science and society for open, persistent, robust, and secure access to well-described and easily discovered Earth observational data." Supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, DataONE ensures "the preservation and access to multi-scale, multi-discipline, and multi-national science data." DataONE transcends "domain boundaries and makes biological data available from the genome to the ecosystem; makes environmental data available from atmospheric, ecological, hydrological, and oceanographic sources; provides secure and long-term preservation and access; and engages scientists, land-managers, policy makers, students, educators, and the public through logical access and intuitive visualizations."

NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network Inc.)
NEON collects “data across the United States on the impacts of climate change, land use change and invasive species on natural resources and biodiversity. NEON is a project of the U.S. National Science Foundation, with many other U.S. agencies and NGOs cooperating.”

NEON is “the first observatory network of its kind designed to detect and enable forecasting of ecological change at continental scales over multiple decades.” The data NEON collects is freely and openly available to all users.