The WOSSAC Archive
The World Soil Survey Archive and Catalogue, or WOSSAC, is one of the key facilities of the Cranfield Environment Centre (CEC), incorporating the former National Soil Resources Institute (NSRI), at Cranfield University, UK. We are the largest UK national and international centre for research and development, consultancy and training in soils and their interaction with the atmosphere, land use, geology and water resources. CEC is a centre within Cranfield's School of Water, Energy and Environment, leading Cranfield's research on soil. The WOSSAC collection contains soil-related materials accumulated over the many years of soils activity at Cranfield, from NSRI and its predecessor organisations, the Soil Survey and Land Research Centre (SSLRC) and before that the Soil Survey of England and Wales (SSEW). The materials have arisen via reciprocal sharing arrangement with parallel survey organisations, from personal donations, and from a number of significant institutional donations, foremost amongst which is the collection from HTSPE (DAI), and most recently the Booker Tate soils collection.
This website presents the public face of the WOSSAC archive, explaining the many unique holdings of the collection. Where possible we are making our materials available online in digitised form. If there are fees applicable for their access, then these are made on a cost-recovery basis only. The materials we hold are directly applicable to many contemporary development and environmental issues, including the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the monitoring of environmental changes, and the underpinning of research in Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital.
WOSSAC is the registered trademark ® of Cranfield University. To learn more about our wider soils work at Cranfield University, visit our Land Information System (LandIS) web portal at landis.org.uk, or our centre web page at www.cranfield.ac.uk/themes/environment-and-agrifood/landis.
The WOSSAC website was redeveloped using the excellent Engage Bootstrap web template designed by Graygrids.com.
The carousel images on the home page are:
- first, from Malta, taken during the Cranfield project MALSIS, working together with the Government of Malta develop a National Soil Information System in preparation for Malta's accession to the EU. The photo shows the Dingli cliffs, where terraced agriculture is practised on the characteristic 'terra rossa' red limestone soils. Many Maltese items are held in the archive and our work continues on the islands, most recently with the FOWARIM project.
- second, an oasis in the deep Libyan Sahara. Cranfield has a long association working with Libyan scientific researchers developing early warning systems for desertification and land degradation, as the ‘perfect storm’ of climate change and societal pressures exerts its toll on the fragile rangeland regions.
- third, bog cotton grass growing in the volcanic soils of Iceland, an island with a fascinating volcanic geomorphology and associated soils. The photo is from near Seljalandsfoss on the southern coast. The vegetation here is typical on the black glacial outwash soils in the coastal plain.
- fourth, the Explanatory Soil Map of Kenya from the 1982 soil survey report by the Kenyan Soil Survey, item 25207 in the archive. The area around the capital Nairobi is shown, revealing the great diversity of landscapes, with the volcanic Mount Suswa clearly shown to the west.
The WOSSAC logo was designed by Freepik.
National outlines are provided by gadm.