Soil and Terrain Database for Northeastern Africa and Crop Production System Zones of the IGAD Subregion

The Soil and Terrain Database for Northeastern Africa contains land resource information on soils, physiography, geology and vegetation for the following ten countries: Burundi, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. The information is accessible with an easy-to-use viewer program and is also stored in vector Arc/Info export format. Information on individual soil properties with class values is also given. A land suitability assessment for irrigated and upland crops for each unit is included. The scale ofthe source material is variable and ranges between 1:1 million and 1:2 million. A user manual for the viewer program and background information on the collected and correlated land resource materials are contained in filed documents.

Soils are classified in the Revised Legend; physiographic and lithology information was collected using an earlier draft version of the SOTER manual.

The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) -- Sudan, Kenya, Djibouti, Somalia, Uganda, Eritrea, Ethiopia -- Crop Production System Zones (CPSZ) software is a detailed database that provides background information about actual farming in the region. It comes with a program (CVIEW, a CPSZ viewer) that displays maps, zooms in and out, and provides export facilities for the maps in image format and for the actual data in text format. The elementary mapping unit is a compromise between administrative units and agro-ecological zones: whenever steep agro-ecological gradients exist, administrative units are subdivided, thus resulting in 1200 mapping units that are homogeneous from an agro-ecological point of view, while retaining the compatibility with the administrative units used for most socio-economic variables in agricultural planning.

The just over 500 mappable variables are subdivided into several categories covering the spectrum from agronomy and livestock to the physical environment. For each mapping unit, detailed information is also presented on the crop calendar, typical yields and main pests and diseases.

This CD-ROM contains a collection of land and natural resource information for Northeastern Africa, in particular for the IGAD countries bordering the Nile basin. It includes data on administrative boundaries, rivers and lakes, soil and terrain, climatology, land use, physiography, geology and natural vegetation in easily accessible format.

Soil and Terrain Database for Northeasterm Africa (1:1 Million Scale) and Crop Production System Zones of the IGAD Subregion is provided on CD-ROM by the FAO, Land and Water Digital Media Series (Number 2). The CD-ROM can be purchased (Price: US$40) from FAO, Sales and Marketing Group, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla 0100 Rome, Italy (Fax: [phone] E-mail: [e-mail]).