SoilGrids FAQ
Here we provide answers for some of the frequently asked questions of SoilGrids.
There is a missing tile in XX?
There are a few instances where there is a missing tile in different areas for specific soil properties.
The known areas are:
- OCD - all layers - Peru
- Bulk Density - 100-200cm Kazakhstan/China border
- Bulk Density - all layers - Nicaragua
- Nitrogen - all layers - Ethiopia
We are working to rectify these missing tiles.
When I calculate carbon stocks from the carbon density layer I do not get the same value as the carbon stock layer, why not?
To calculate carbon stocks, first we modelled the carbon density from SOC concentration, bulk density and proportion of coarse fragments for each observation. Then, the weighted sum of the carbon densities for the observations between 0 and 30 cm was calculated. Finally, a Quantile Random Forest model was calibrated and used for the global map. (This is taken from SoilGrids documentation). The key point is that the carbon stock layer was not calculated from the carbon density layer, but from the soil observations.
If you are looking for carbon stock at a deeper depth, it is of course one of the possible methods to calculate the stock from the carbon density, but we would not recommend to switch methods at different depths.
What year is SoilGrids?
There is no year for SoilGrids, we use all the data available in WOSIS (for details see the ESSD paper), as our soil data source, as well as some points that are not available (due to liscensing) to share publicly.
Why is the SoilGrids Python/R/QGIS package/plugin not working as expected?
SoilGrids do not own or maintain any such packages or alike. We would recommend to directly contact the package maintainer for assistance.
If the package is dependent on the (beta) REST API our fair use policy of 5 API calls per minute still remains, and may be the reason for no data being returned. Please make sure you adhere to our fair use policy as described here.
Which tile in the WebDAV corresponds to my region of interest?
We do not recommend to access the data in the WebDav via the tiles, instead by the global VRTs (which are compressed formats that can be extracted in GIS software to TIFF files). There are various ways to manage these, and extract data for a specific region of interest, depending on your software of choice, please see the tutorials here.
Please note that SoilGrids is a global model intended for global applications, the results are best suited for continental or macro region analysis, in some instances it may be reasonable to subset to a national or regional level but we do not advise to use SoilGrids at the local or farm level.
Can I have permission to use SoilGrids data/maps/screenshot?
You are welcome to, SoilGrids is available under a CC BY 4.0 license (see here in our faqs)
Please cite as follows. Common soil chemical and physical properties:
Poggio, L., de Sousa, L. M., Batjes, N. H., Heuvelink, G. B. M., Kempen, B., Ribeiro, E., and Rossiter, D.: SoilGrids 2.0: producing soil information for the globe with quantified spatial uncertainty, SOIL, 7, 217–240, 2021. DOI
Soil water content at different pressure heads:
Turek, M.E., Poggio, L., Batjes, N. H., Armindo, R. A., de Jong van Lier, Q., de Sousa, L.M., Heuvelink, G. B. M. : Global mapping of volumetric water retention at 100, 330 and 15 000 cm suction using the WoSIS database, International Soil and Water Conservation Research, 11-2, 225-239, 2023. DOI
If you take screenshots or similar, the source website should be mentioned. Some useful example guides on this can be found here with Google Earth as an example, and here for citing a map.
What are the SoilGrids (2017) USDA texture classes?
The legend files for SoilGrids 2017 can be found here.
What if I did not find an answer to my question?
If you have a technical question about SoilGrids that is not answered in this FAQ or wider documentation, please either contact us at soilgrids@isric.org and we will be happy to assist you where we can, or please post it to GIS.StackExchange, under the tag soilgrids.
Last updated on 2026-02-24