European Soil Data Center

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The European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC) is the thematic centre for soil related data in Europe and has been established according to a decision taken among the European Commission's DG ENV, DG JRC, ESTAT and the European Environment Agency.

European Soil Data Center is one of the ten environmental data centres in Europe and is the focal point for soil data at European level.

It contains currently soil data and information at European scale and will link in the future to similar datacenters at global and national level.

[edit] European Soil Portal

The European Soil Portal is the joint contribution of the European Commission and the European Soil Bureau Network (ESBN) to the building of a thematic spatial data infrastructure for soils. This portal, located at http://eusoils.jrc.ec.europa.eu/, is the place in which all relevant data and information regarding soils at European level has been collected. Furthermore it is a useful utility for the ESBN to promote its range of activities. The activities related to this portal are in line with activities related to the INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe). INSPIRE deals, among others, with difficulties to identify, access and use available spatial information in Europe.

The European Soil Portal has been considered as a success story of networking different soil information in European level. It is mainly built around the European Soil Database (ESDB), which consists of a number of components of which the Soil Geographical Database of Eurasia (SGDBE) at Scale 1:1,000,000 is one. It is a representation of the diversity and spatial variability of the soil coverage across Europe and its neighbouring countries.