This digital soil and physiographic database for northern and central Eurasia covers China, Mongolia, and all countries of the former Soviet Union. The research summarizes and updates the FAO Soil Map of the World for the territory of Russia at a 1:5 million scale.  The CD-ROM, which is the first of its kind to include detailed information on Russia, was produced as part of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) initiative to provide the world's scientific and agricultural communities with a systematic update of soil and terrain.

In addition to IIASA's Land Use Change and Agriculture program and FAO, collaborators include the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Soil Resources Information Centre (ISRIC), the European Soil Bureau (ESB), and several national soil institutes worldwide.

The related report "Soils of Russia: Correlated with the Revised Legend of the FAO Soil Map of the World and World Reference Base for Soil Resources" is available from IIASA's Publication Catalogue, under number RR-00-13, in PDF format.

Required Software:  All the maps are provided in Arc/Info GIS software native format and export (*.E00) format. Therefore, Arc/Info or other GIS software that can read either of these formats would be required to access and use the maps in a GIS. However, if one would like to only display the maps, then, a software called ArcExplorer can be used, which can be downloaded free of charge from the ESRI website. Some of the maps and their layouts/plots are provided also in ArcView Project (*.apr) format. These maps can be displayed and/or queried using ArcView software. All the textual documents are in MS-Word 97 or compatible format.

Installation:  The ArcView *.apr (ArcView project files) can be run directly from the CD-ROM and can also be installed on the hard-disk. Instructions on how to proceed are contained in the readme.rtf file Arc/Info, Arc/View and ArcExplorer are registered trademarks of ESRI, Inc.

Responsible for this page: Elisabeth Kawczynski
Last updated: 16 Oct 2009