Scottish Soils Knowledge and Information Base (SSKIB)

SSKIB (Scottish Soils Knowledge and Information Base) is a summary dataset comprising mean, median, maximum, minimum and standard deviations of a range of soil chemical and physical attributes for a typical (modal) soil profile for all soil series delineated on the 1:250,000 Scottish National Soil Map.

The dataset was developed over a number of years (from around 2004) for internal use and was released to the public to accompany the 1:250 000 scale National Soil Map of Scotland on 1st April 2011. It is based on soil analytical data from soil profiles collected since 1934, with the bulk of the data collected from the late 1960s to late 1980s.

There is a related table with soil hydrological and physical properties (bulk density, moisture retention and hydraulic conductivity derived by pedotransfer function) which is not yet publically available, but which is potentially available to researchers. Please contact the data distributor for further details.

Development of SSKIB began as a Scottish Government (RESAS) funded research programme around 2004 primarily for internal use with the then Macaulay Land Use Research Institute for broad scale modelling of changes in soil chemistry. Its use was extended to assess potential changes in soil carbon contents (ECOSSE model) and finally developed to deliver soils information via the web (http://sifss.hutton.ac.uk/) over PC, Android and IOS operating systems. It was released for general use in 2011 to provide soil chemical data to accompany the 1:250 000 scale soil map and underwent a few minor revisions until this release in 2018. Funding to maintain the dataset comes from the Rural & Environment Science & Analytical Services Division of the Scottish Government Underpinning Capacity fund.

The dataset should be cited as 'Soil Survey of Scotland Staff. 2018. Scottish Soils Knowledge and Information Base (SSKIB). Version 1.1. 10.5281/zenodo.5566700'