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arXiv · 2403.16778

GloSIS: The Global Soil Information System Web Ontology

Raul Palma·Bogusz Janiak·Luís Moreira de Sousa·Kathi Schleidt·Tomáš Řezník·Fenny van Egmond·Johan Leenaars·Dimitrios Moshou·Abdul Mouazen·Peter Wilson·David Medyckyj-Scott·Alistair Ritchie·Yusuf Yigini·Ronald Vargas
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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 Semantic Web 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.

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Raul Palma, Bogusz Janiak, Luís Moreira de Sousa, Kathi Schleidt, Tomáš Řezník, Fenny van Egmond, Johan Leenaars, Dimitrios Moshou, Abdul Mouazen, Peter Wilson, David Medyckyj-Scott, Alistair Ritchie, Yusuf Yigini, Ronald Vargas. 2024-03-25. GloSIS: The Global Soil Information System Web Ontology. https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.16778

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