Abstract:
Established in 2012 by members of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Global Soil Partnership (GSP) is a
global network of stakeholders promoting sound land and soil management practices towards a sustainable world food system.
However, soil survey largely remains a local or regional activity, bound to heterogeneous methods and conventions. Recognising
the relevance of global and trans-national policies towards sustainable land management practices, the GSP elected data harmonisation
and exchange as one of its key lines of action. Building upon international standards and previous work towards a
global soil data ontology, an improved domain model was eventually developed within the GSP [54], the basis for a Global Soil
Information System (GloSIS). This work also identified the Semantic Web as a possible avenue to operationalise the domain
model.
This article presents the GloSIS web ontology, an implementation of the GloSIS domain model with the Web Ontology
Language (OWL). Thoroughly employing a host of SemanticWeb standards (SOSA, SKOS, GeoSPARQL, QUDT), GloSIS lays
out not only a soil data ontology but also an extensive set of ready-to-use code-lists for soil description and physio-chemical
analysis. Various examples are provided on the provision and use of GloSIS-compliant linked data, showcasing the contribution
of this ontology to the discovery, exploration, integration and access of soil data.