Soil Diversity and Climate: an Overview of Profile Data and Acquisition with the WoSIS Global Legacy Dataset

Soil profiles are the primary field evidence from which pedogenesis, soil classification and land-use effects are interpreted, yet their availability remains uneven across climates and land-cover contexts. Here, we analyse the World Soil Information Service (WoSIS) 2023 snapshot together with Copernicus Global Land Cover 2015 and the global biome delineations to assess the distribution, classification status and temporal coverage of legacy soil-profile observations. Cropland is the most represented land-cover class, with 67,370 profiles (29.5%), followed by herbaceous vegetation with 40,277 profiles (17.7%), whereas wetlands, mangroves, tundra and several forested or arid systems remain rather underrepresented. The temporal distribution of profiles with recorded sampling dates increases markedly from the mid-twentieth century to the 1980s and declines after 1990, suggesting a possible shift away from field-based profile description and towards mapping, modelling and remotely sensed approaches. The review of forest, volcanic, cold-region, arid, wetland, cropland, grassland, urban and Mediterranean soils further shows that profile description remains essential for interpreting soil functions, diagnostic horizons, degradation processes and land-management constraints. This work provides a repeatable workflow for future WoSIS releases and other harmonised soil databases, and highlights the need to recover, standardize and publish legacy soil-profile information while training a new generation of pedologists able to combine field description with digital soil science.