FAO Launches New Global Soil Database

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has unveiled a new global soil database that will help better map current and future land productivity as well as the present carbon storage and carbon sequestration potential of the world’s soils. FAO says that the database will also help identify land and water limitations and assist in assessing land degradation and soil erosion risks.

“The more information we have about soil properties, the more we can evaluate the quality of our natural resources all over the world and their potential to produce food now and in future scenarios of climate change”, said Alexander Muller, FAO Assistant Director General for Natural Resources and Environment Management.

Based on the soil database, the FAO has produced a Global Gap Map which will help identify where soil carbon storage is greatest and the physical potential for billions of tons of additional carbon to be sequestrated in degraded soils. Efforts to use agriculture to capture green house gasses have involved above ground sequestration mainly by planting trees. Although the amount of carbon captured using this approach is substantial, there are growing interests in finding ways to increase carbon sequestration in soil.

For more information, read http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/1000882/index.html The World Soil Database can be accessed at http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/luc07/External-World-soil-database/HTML/index.html