Exploring Hungary’s Soils Online: The Soil Spatial Data Portal Goes Live

As awareness of the importance of soils and the concept of soil security continues to grow, an increasing number of disciplines beyond traditional user groups require spatial information on soil characteristics, including soil properties, functions, processes and ecosystem services. Depending on the intended application, these data are needed at different spatial extents and resolutions. At the same time, there is a growing demand for digital access to soil information and its widest possible availability.

The provision of up-to-date content for spatial soil information systems is ensured through digital soil mapping, a field in which the Institute for Soil Sciences of the HUN-REN Centre for Agricultural Research has achieved internationally recognised results. Owing to the paradigm shift that has taken place over the past two decades in the interpretation and production of spatial soil information, newly generated soil spatial datasets extend far beyond the thematic content of traditional soil maps in terms of their thematic scope, representation and depth-related information.

With the launch of the Soil Spatial Data Portal, the Institute has made publicly available, in a structured format, both the web-based map services developed in recent years and the digital soil map archives created to compensate for the previous public access restrictions to the soil maps preserved in its map collection.

By publishing these map-based datasets, the portal opens up new opportunities for a much broader audience to explore Hungary’s soil cover through user-friendly tools. At the same time, it enables the spatially explicit presentation of soil-specific characteristics for professional users and stakeholders across a wide range of sectors.

Researchers at the HUN-REN Centre for Agricultural Research’s Institute for Soil Sciences hope that the portal will be widely used and regularly explored by both professionals and members of the public. Feedback, comments and suggestions for further development are welcome at info@talaj-teradat.hu.