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Full catalog/HWSD_1247
HWSD_1247·v1·dataset

Worldwide soil types and properties (gridded)

Regridded Harmonized World Soil Database v1.2
land NASA ORNL_CLOUD Level 4 netCDF-4 classic
In plain English

What it measures. Global maps of soil characteristics, including soil types and properties such as the amount of organic carbon stored in the soil per square meter.

How it's made. Created by taking the Harmonized World Soil Database and regridding it onto regular high-resolution global grids.

How & where you'd use it. Used to model the global carbon cycle and to study land-use pressures around food production, bioenergy and biodiversity.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › SOILS › CARBONLAND SURFACE › SOILS › CATION EXCHANGE CAPACITYLAND SURFACE › SOILS › ORGANIC MATTER

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2000-01-01 → 2000-12-31
  • Measured byNOT APPLICABLE (NOT APPLICABLE)
  • Processing levelLevel 4
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsnetCDF-4 classic
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

This data set describes select global soil parameters from the Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD) v1.2, including additional calculated parameters such as area weighted soil organic carbon (kg C per m2), as high resolution NetCDF files. These data were regridded and upscaled from the Harmonized World Soil Database v1.2 The HWSD provides information for addressing emerging problems of land competition for food production, bio-energy demand and threats to biodiversity and can be used as input to model global carbon cycles. The data are presented as a series of 27 NetCDF v3/v4 (*.nc4) files at 0.05-degree spatial resolution, and one NetCDF file regridded to the Community Land Model (CLM) grid cell resolution (0.9 degree x 1.25 degree) for the nominal year of 2000.

Get the data

hwsd_1247_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="HWSD_1247",
    version="1",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from ORNL_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.