Providing Soil Information for the Global Community-the Globalsoilmap Consortium.

Soil Survey information is needed at fine resolutions and scales for input in solving some of societies most critical environmental issues, including global food production, quantifying the effect of soils in climate change mitigation, assessing the role of soils in areas of water scarcity and for the importance of soils in studies on biodiversity or biofuel production. This need is recognized widely and coincides with a leap in technologies that allow for the prediction of soil properties including an estimate of the uncertainty. The GlobalSoilMap consortium has been formed with the objective to create a digital map of the world's soil properties. The methods for mapping soil properties globally are not straightforward and will rely on the variety and quality of data sources in different parts of the world.  This paper presents the background of the Consortium, the specifications of the new global soil map, and a set of methodologies for global digital soil mapping.  The initial information will rely on methodologies based on legacy or existing soil data. The second stage comprises a set of methodologies to obtain new soil samples based on the available information or soil data.  Examples are given for a range of key soil properties and from different parts of the world using different methodologies.