About

“Man’s most human characteristic is not his ability to learn, which he shares with many other species, but his ability to teach and store what others have developed and taught him.” Margaret Mead, Culture and Commitment: The New Relationships Between the Generations in the 1970s.

Soil Spectroscopy for Global Good

The SS4GG was created by Woodwell Climate Research Center, OpenGeoHub Foundation, and University of Florida, and was formally funded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Cyberinformatics Tools Coordinated Innovation Network, award 2020-67021-32467 between 2021 and 2024. It brought together soil scientists, data scientists and other stakeholders to overcome some of the current bottlenecks preventing a wider and more efficient use of soil spectroscopy. A series of activities addressed many topics including interoperability, machine learning, community events, and application of spectroscopy predictions for informed decision-making. For more information about the initiative, please refer to our official webpage.

As the original project has ended, SS4GG keeps running and improving its resources with funding from Woodwell Climate, OpenGeoHub, and Department of Energy’s (DOE), while working to secure a new round of multiyear funding.

SS4GG also works with other global initiatives including the FAO Global Soil Partnership and the IEEE P4005 - Standards and Protocols for Soil Spectroscopy working group.

Open Soil Spectral Library

The Open Soil Spectral Library (OSSL) is a compilation of several heterogenous and independent datasets into a common standardized source. It is available as a digital asset and web-services. The OSSL compilation allowed our team to fit generally-applicable prediction models based on spectral measurements. Several resources are built around the OSSL, which includes:

Publication alert!

A peer-reviewed and open-access publication describing the first version of OSSL database and initial predictive modeling is available in PLOS One. Please use the following info when citing the OSSL:

Safanelli, J. L., Hengl, T., Parente, L. L., Minarik, R., Bloom, D. E., Todd-Brown, K., … Sanderman, J. (2025). Open Soil Spectral Library (OSSL): Building reproducible soil calibration models through open development and community engagement. PloS One, 20(1), e0296545. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0296545.

Contributors

Over the past years several people have contributed or are still contributing with the SS4GG. The following list is not exhaustive:

  • José Lucas Safanelli (core team)
  • Tomislav Hengl (core team)
  • Jonathan Sanderman (core team)
  • Katherine Todd-Brown (core team)
  • Rich Ferguson (advisory board)
  • Fenny van Egmond (advisory board)
  • Keith Shepherd (advisory board)
  • Leandro Parente (dev and project contributor)
  • Robert Minarik (project contributor)
  • Dellena E. Bloom (project contributor)
  • Wanderson de Sousa Mendes (project contributor)
  • Asa Gholizadeh (project contributor)
  • Colleen Partida (project contributor)
  • Aleksandar Sekulic (web services)
  • Petar Bursac (web services)
  • Henning Teickner (github contributor)
  • Deepak C. (github contributor)
  • Philipp Baumann (foss dev and github contributor)
  • Franck Albinet (foss dev)
  • Laura Summerauer (data contributor)
  • Marcus Schiedung (data contributor)
  • Loretta Garrett (data contributor)
  • Branislav Jović (data contributor)

Acknowledgments

Funding

Soil Spectroscopy for Global Good (SS4GG) was formally funded by USDA NIFA Award 2020-67021-32467 between 2021-2024. It has been currently and partially supported by Woodwell Climate, OpenGeoHub, and the US Department of Energy.

  • USDA-NRCS Kellogg Soil Survey Laboratory (KSSL), especially Rich Ferguson, Scarlett Murphy, Skye Wills, and Jonathan Maynard, for hosting the KSSL MIR [1] and RaCA VisNIR [2] databases in the public domain, while assisting and answering many questions about the databases and laboratory SOPs;
  • World Agroforestry ICRAF & World Soil Information ISRIC for releasing a VisNIR soil spectral library [3] based on the Soil Information System (ISIS) of ISRIC;
  • World Agroforestry (ICRAF) for releasing the Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS) phases I and II MIR spectral libraries [4], a collaborative project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Partners included: CIAT-TSBF, ISRIC, CIESIN, The Earth Institute at Columbia University and World Agroforestry (ICRAF);
  • European Soil Data Centre for making openly available the LUCAS Soil Spectral Library [5].;
  • Laura Summerauer from ETH Zurich, for sharing the Central African Soil Spectral Library [6];
  • Marcus Schiedung (formerly from University of Zurich, now Thünen Institute) for sharing a MIR soil spectral library from forest soils of North Canada [7];
  • Loretta Garrett from Scion Research for sharing several MIR spectral datasets from forest soils in New Zealand [8];
  • Branislav Jović from the University of Novi Sad for sharing a MIR soil spectral library from Serbian soils [9];

Disclaimer

Whilst utmost care has been taken by the Soil Spectroscopy project and data authors while collecting and compiling the data, the data is provided “as is”. Woodwell Climate Research Center, University of Florida, OpenGeoHub foundation and its suppliers and licensors hereby disclaim all warranties of any kind, express or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Neither Woodwell Climate Research Center, University of Florida, OpenGeoHub foundation nor its suppliers and licensors, makes any warranty that the Website will be error free or that access thereto will be continuous or uninterrupted. You understand that you download from, or otherwise obtain content or services through, the Website at your own discretion and risk.

In no event shall the data authors, the Soil Spectroscopy project, or relevant funding agencies be liable for any actual, incidental or consequential damages arising from use of the data. By using the Soil Spectroscopy project data, the user expressly acknowledges that the Data may contain some nonconformities, defects, or errors. No warranty is given that the data will meet the user’s needs or expectations or that all nonconformities, defects, or errors can or will be corrected. The user should always verify actual data; therefore the user bears all responsibility in determining whether the data is fit for the user’s intended use.

The data and manual is always under improvement. If you notice an error or outdated information, please submit a correction/pull request to our github repository or send us an email!

This is a community project. No profits are being made from building and serving the Open Soil Spectral Library.

License

This manual and all project code is free to use, and if not otherwise indicated, is licensed under the MIT License. The OSSL training data and models, if not otherwise indicated, are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International CC-BY.

How to cite

We highly recommend citing the OSSL paper for everything related to the OSSL and SS4GG initiative:

@article{Safanelli2025,
  title    = "Open Soil Spectral Library ({OSSL)}: Building reproducible soil
              calibration models through open development and community
              engagement",
  author   = "Safanelli, Jos{\'e} L and Hengl, Tomislav and Parente, Leandro L
              and Minarik, Robert and Bloom, Dellena E and Todd-Brown,
              Katherine and Gholizadeh, Asa and Mendes, Wanderson de Sousa and
              Sanderman, Jonathan",
  journal  = "PLoS One",
  volume   =  20,
  number   =  1,
  pages    = "e0296545",
  month    =  jan,
  year     =  2025,
  language = "en",
  doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0296545}
}

If otherwise you just want to cite the manual, please use the following:

@misc{OSSL_manual,
  author = {Soil Spectroscopy for Global Good team},
  title = {Open Soil Spectral Library Manual},
  year = 2025,
  url = {https://soilspectroscopy.github.io/ossl-manual/},
  doi = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5759693},
  urldate = {2025-01-13}
}