The World Soil Museum (WSM) displays physical examples of

soil Soil, also commonly referred to as earth or dirt, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life. Some scientific definitions distinguish ''dirt'' from ''soil'' by restricting the former te ...

profiles (

monoliths A monolith is a geological feature consisting of a single massive stone or rock, such as some mountains. For instance, Savandurga mountain is a monolith mountain in India. Erosion usually exposes the geological formations, which are often ma ...

) representing major

types of the world, from the

volcanic ash Volcanic ash consists of fragments of rock, mineral crystals, and volcanic glass, created during volcano, volcanic eruptions and measuring less than 2 mm (0.079 inches) in diameter. The term volcanic ash is also often loosely used t ...

soils from

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

to the red, strongly weathered soils from the

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...

region. The

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

is managed by '
ISRIC - World Soil Information
'', legally registered as the International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC), an independent, science-based foundation. Physically, the museum is located on the campus of

Wageningen University and Research Centre Wageningen University & Research (also known as Wageningen UR; abbreviation: WUR) is a public university in Wageningen, Netherlands, specializing in life sciences with a focus on agriculture, technical and engineering subjects. It is a globally ...

Wageningen Wageningen () is a municipality and a historic city in the central Netherlands, in the province of Gelderland. It is famous for Wageningen University, which specialises in life sciences. The municipality had a population of in , of which many t ...

, The Netherlands. The WSM (originally known as International Soil Museum) was created in 1996 at the request of the '
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
'' and the '
International Society of Soil Science (ISSS)
'' (now IUSS). with a view to underpin the development of the FAO-UNESCO 'Soil Map of the World'

FAO soil classification The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) developed a supra-national classification, which offers useful generalizations about pedogenesis in relation to the interactions between the main soil-forming factors. It was first pu ...

. The initial ISM building was located at the University of Utrecht. Some 80 soil monoliths are on display in the WSM, with a much larger collection (some 1000 from over 70 countries) stored and maintained in the repository. For each soil monolith, there is supplemental information about the site of sampling (e.g. landscape, land use, parent material and climate), a detailed profile description for each soil horizon or layer, and data on chemical compositions and physical features. The museum displays examples of the main (32) WRB Soil Reference Groups of the World. A special section is devoted to the major soil types of Netherlands. Further, it showcases soils that have changed significantly under the influence of long-term human activity. Much of this information can also be viewed onlin

The WSM plays an important role in ISRIC's educational and outreach programme, and is an important component of ISRIC's Annual Spring School on world soils and their assessmen

Recent developments at ISRIC are succinctly described in a series of Annual Highlights.

References

External links

Website ISRIC World Soil Information

Website ISRIC's World Soil Museum

Visit ISRIC's virtual World Soil Museum
{{authority control 1966 establishments in the Netherlands Museums established in 1966 2014 establishments in the Netherlands Museums established in 2014 Museums in the Netherlands Soil University museums in the Netherlands 21st-century architecture in the Netherlands 20th-century architecture in the Netherlands