National Soil Database

The NSDB is a collection of geospatial datasets which contain soil, landscape, and climatic data for all of Canada. It serves as the national archive for land resources information that was collected by federal and provincial field surveys, or created by land data analysis projects.

Datasets that have been superseded have been made available in the National Soil Database Archive.

The NSDB includes GIS datasets at a variety of scales, and the characteristics of each named soil series. The principal types of data holdings (ordered by scale) are as follows.

Soil name and layer data

includes soil characteristics and soil layer information for all of the named soils of Canada

Soil name and layer data

National Pedon Database

contains pedon data that has been collected from across Canada
standardized data for over 100 soil properties

National Pedon Database

Soil Landscape Grids of Canada, 100m

complete national coverage of Canada
seven key soil properties at five depth increments
inclusion of depth to bedrock
100m resolution

Soil Landscape Grids of Canada, 100m

Detailed Soil Surveys (DSS)

scale varies (1:20,000 to 1:250,000)
coverage includes much of the significant agricultural areas of Canada
data content varies, availability of digital data varies
printed provincial indexes are available; query the NSDB data holdings

Detailed Soil Surveys (DSS)

Canada Land Inventory (CLI)

scale of 1:250,000
coverage includes most agricultural lands in Canada
data includes capability for Agriculture, Forestry, Wildlife, Recreation, Ungulates
produced in the 1960's, 1970's and early 1980s
better soils data and CLI ratings at larger scales are available (Detailed Soil Surveys)

Canada Land Inventory (CLI)