Baselines for land degradation neutrality indicators in the Omusati region, Namibia

Soil and vegetation data collected to develop LDN baselines in Otjozondjupa region of Namibia. The baselines include: land cover change, land productivity, soil organic carbon, and bush encroachment.

A homogenized, global set of 1,125 soil profiles is presented. These profiles have been extracted from the database developed at ISRIC for a project on "World Inventory of Soil Emission Potentials" (WISE), as a contribution to the activities of the Global Soils Data Task Group of IGBP-DIS. The subset consists of a selection of 665 profiles originating from digital data files released by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS, Lincoln), 250 profiles obtained from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO, Rome), and 210 profiles from the reference collection of the International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC, Wageningen). All profiles are georeferenced and classified in the FAO-Unesco Legend whereby they can be linked to the edited and digital version of the FAO-Unesco Soil Map of the World. This data set is being released in the public domain for use by global modellers and other interested scientists. It is envisaged that the data set will be expanded by ISRIC when new, uniform soil profile data become available. Note: a) A more recent version (some 10,000 profiles) of WISE profiles is available at: http://data.isric.org/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/a351682c-330a-4995-a5a1-57ad160e621c (2009) b) For a larger compilation see the WoSIS database: http://isric.org/explore/wosis (2017)

The International Soil Carbon Network (ISCN) is a science-based network that facilitates data sharing, assembles databases, identifies gaps in data coverage, and enables spatially explicit assessments of soil carbon in context of landscape, climate, land use, and biotic variables.

Soil organic carbon stock in tons per ha for ICCP depth intervals predicted using the global compilation of soil ground observations. Accuracy assessement of the maps is availble in Hengl et at. (2017) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169748. Data provided as GeoTIFFs with internal compression (co='COMPRESS=DEFLATE'). Measurement units: t / ha.

Soil organic carbon content (measured by either wet oxidation or dry combustion at 900 C) in g/kg (fine earth) at 6 standard depths predicted using two sets of Africa soil profiles data. For details see published paper here below (Hengl T., G.B.M. Heuvelink, B. Kempen, J.G.B. Leenaars, M.G. Walsh, K.D. Shepherd, A. Sila, R.A. MacMillan, J. Mendes de Jesus, L.T. Desta, J.E. Tondoh, 2015. Mapping Soil Properties of Africa at 250 m Resolution: Random Forests Significantly Improve Current Predictions. PLoS ONE 10(6)

Soil organic carbon stock in tons per ha for 6 standard depth intervals predicted using the global compilation of soil ground observations. Accuracy assessement of the maps is availble in Hengl et at. (2017) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169748. Data provided as GeoTIFFs with internal compression (co='COMPRESS=DEFLATE'). Measurement units: t / ha.