Import WoSIS Snapshot 2023 tsv files in R

This page will guide you to open the WoSIS snapshot tsv files in R.

Download the TSV file

The first step is to download the zipfile from https://files.isric.org/public/wosis_snapshot/WoSIS_2023_December.zip, and open the readme for details.

Uncompress the zip file and set the folder to your working directory in R.

setwd("D:/YourFolder/WoSIS_2023_december/")

Import TSV file in R

Import the various tsv files using read.table

observations <- read.table("wosis_202312_observations.tsv",
 sep = "\t",
 header = TRUE,
 quote = "",
 comment.char = "",
 stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

sites <- read.table("wosis_202312_sites.tsv",
 sep = "\t",
 header = TRUE,
 quote = "",
 comment.char = "",
 stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

layers <- read.table("wosis_202312_layers.tsv",
 sep = "\t",
 header = TRUE,
 quote = "",
 comment.char = "",
 stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

profiles <- read.table("wosis_202312_profiles.tsv",
 sep = "\t",
 header = TRUE,
 quote = "",
 comment.char = "",
 stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

Example for a property table (repeat as necessary):

# example for a property table (repeat as necessary):
cfvo <- read.table("wosis_202312_cfvo.tsv",
 sep = "\t",
 header = TRUE,
 quote = "",
 comment.char = "",
 stringsAsFactors = FALSE
)

Author: Giulio Genova 08/2024 (former ISRIC staff) Updated: 09/2025, Betony Colman (ISRIC staff)

Last updated on 2025-10-16