The RADAMBRASIL project extensively mapped the Amazon soils using a combination of soil pit information, aerial photography, and geologic maps. During the project, 1,153 soil pits, distributed basin-wide, were described and sampled by horizon and analyzed for texture and chemical composition.This data set, which consists of one file in ASCII comma separated format, contains soil profile descriptions for locations throughout Brazilian Amazonia. These data are based on RADAMBRASIL surveys from the Soil Profiles of Amazonia (Source: IPAM, Brazil/WHRC, USA). See the companion file Soil Profiles of Amazonia.pdf

Surface parameter digital maps of vegetation, soil, and topography were obtained for Rondonia, Brazil, covering the 5x5 degree region bounded by 13-8 degrees S and 65-60 degrees W. Numerical maps of the natural landscape structure were prepared by digitizing existing 1:1,000,000 maps. Satellite data give information about the most recent modifications of the surface due to human activities. This mapping work was the first step of a mesoscale meteorological modeling program (Calvet et al., 1997) in forested and deforested Southwestern Amazonia (Rondonia, Brazil). This work was performed in the framework of a research program (CABARE) supported by the European Union, CEC Environment Program.Data are provided in ArcGIS ArcInfo grid ascii format for the following surface parameters:Elevation of terrain of the Rondonia region (altitude.txt)LANDSAT-derived vegetation classification of the Rondonia region in 1993-1994 (classify.txt)Soil classification of the Rondonia region (soil.txt)Sand and Clay of the Rondonia region (sand.txt and clay.txt)Vegetation classification of the Rondonia region from RADAMBRASIL (Macedo et al., 1979) (vegetation.txt)

This data set provides a digital map of soil orders for the Ji-Parana River Basin, in the state of Rondonia, Brazil (Western Amazonia). Soil orders were manually digitized from a 1:500,000 map from EMBRAPA originally published in 1983. Oxisols and Ultisols are the predominant soil types in the basin, encompassing 47% and 24% of the total drainage area, respectively. Entisols cover 14%, Alfisols 13% and Eptisols 2% of the basin (Ballester et al., 2003). One data file is provided in ESRI ArcGIS Shapefile format compressed into a single zip file (*.zip).

This data set provides (1) soil maps for Brazil that are digital versions of the MAPA DE SOLOS DO BRASIL (EMBRAPA, 1981) classified at three levels of detail, 19-class, 70-class and 249-class; (2) vegetation maps for Brazil that are digital versions of the MAPA DE VEGETACAO DO BRASIL (IBGE, 1988) classified at three levels of detail, 13-class, 59-class, and an overprint (combination) class; and (3) a land cover map for all of South America that was derived from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data over the time period 1987 through 1991 (Stone et al., 1994).The seven soil, vegetation, and general land cover classification maps are provided as GeoTIFF files (*.tif) files. There are also three companion files (.pdf), one each, for the soil, vegetation, and land cover maps, with information on map units, class values, codes, and descriptions.

This data set was gridded by BORIS staff from a vector data set received from Canadian Soil Information System (CanSIS). The original data came in two parts that covered Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The data were gridded and merged into one data set of 84 files covering the BOReal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS) region. The data were gridded into the Albers Equal-Area Conic (AEAC) projection. Because the mapping of the two provinces was done separately in the original vector data, there may be discontinuities in some of the soil layers because of different interpretations of certain soil properties.

The data set contains a subset of a global organic soil carbon and nitrogen data set (Zinke et al. 1986). The subset was created for the study area of the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) in South America (i.e., 10 N to 25 S, 30 to 85 W). The point data are available in three formats: a comma-delimited ASCII file (*.csv), an ESRI shapefile, and an ESRI export file (*.e00).The data for the global data set (Zinke et al. 1986) were obtained from soil surveys conducted by Zinke in 1965-1984 and from soil survey literature. The main samples for laboratory analyses were collected at uniform soil increments and included bulk density determinations. Many samples reported in the literature did not have uniform soil increments or bulk density determinations. Only soil profiles that had been sampled either to a meter in depth or to actual depth were included in this database from soil survey literature. When carbon content was known but bulk densities were absent from soil samples reported in the literature, densities were estimated by regression analysis on the basis of the relationship between organic carbon content and measured bulk density in 1800 soil profiles for which bulk densities were known.Further information can be found at ftp://daac.ornl.gov/data/lba/carbon_dynamics/Zinke_soil/comp/zinke_readme.pdf.LBA was a cooperative international research initiative led by Brazil. NASA was a lead sponsor for several experiments. LBA was designed to create the new knowledge needed to understand the climatological, ecological, biogeochemical, and hydrological functioning of Amazonia; the impact of land use change on these functions; and the interactions between Amazonia and the Earth system. More information about LBA can be found at http://www.daac.ornl.gov/LBA/misc_amazon.html.

This data set provides measurements for soil physical and chemical properties, rooting depth and weight, leaf area index (LAI), plant area index (PAI), biomass, fraction of photosynthetically active radiation (fPAR), and ground-based reflectance measurements of soil and litter samples. The samples were collected from 23 areas within the Brazilian research sites of the Brasilia National Park (BNP) and Aguas Emnendadas Ecological Station (AE), Brasilia; Cangacu Research Center, Tocantins; and Tapajos National Forest, Para.The research areas were in the most intensely stressed areas in Brazil, with rapid and aggressive land use conversions in forested and cerrado-transition areas. These field measurements were conducted from June to July 2002. There are 61 comma-delimited (.csv) data files with this data set.

This data set provides (1) soil maps for Brazil that are digital versions of the MAPA DE SOLOS DO BRASIL (EMBRAPA, 1981) classified at three levels of detail, 19-class, 70-class and 249-class; (2) vegetation maps for Brazil that are digital versions of the MAPA DE VEGETACAO DO BRASIL (IBGE, 1988) classified at three levels of detail, 13-class, 59-class, and an overprint (combination) class; and (3) a land cover map for all of South America that was derived from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data over the time period 1987 through 1991 (Stone et al., 1994).The seven soil, vegetation, and general land cover classification maps are provided as GeoTIFF files (*.tif) files. There are also three companion files (.pdf), one each, for the soil, vegetation, and land cover maps, with information on map units, class values, codes, and descriptions.

This data set provides a digital map of soil orders for the Ji-Parana River Basin, in the state of Rondonia, Brazil (Western Amazonia). Soil orders were manually digitized from a 1:500,000 map from EMBRAPA originally published in 1983. Oxisols and Ultisols are the predominant soil types in the basin, encompassing 47% and 24% of the total drainage area, respectively. Entisols cover 14%, Alfisols 13% and Eptisols 2% of the basin (Ballester et al., 2003). One data file is provided in ESRI ArcGIS Shapefile format compressed into a single zip file (*.zip).

The data set presents the principal data from the Anglo-BRazilian Amazonian Climate Observation Study (ABRACOS) (Gash et al, 1996) and provides quality controlled information from five of the study topics considered by the project in five zipped files containing ASCII text data. The five study topics include Micrometeorology, Climate, Carbon Dioxide and Water Vapor, Plant Physiology, and Soil Moisture. The objectives of the ABRACOS were to monitor Amazonian climate and improve the understanding of the consequences of deforestation and to provide data for the calibration and validation of GCMs and GCM sub-models of Amazonian forest and post-deforestation pasture (Shuttleworth et al, 1991). Three areas were instrumented, each with different soils, dry season intensities and deforestation densities (Gash et al, 1996). In each area, an automatic weather station and soil moisture measurement equipment were installed: in a primary forest site and in nearby cattle pasture, for monitoring climate and soil status throughout the year. Additional intensive periods of study (or Missions), of varying duration, were operated at these sites: for calibration purposes, to understand the physical processes relevant to each site, and for detailed comparisons between sites. These data were collected under the ABRACOS project and made available by the UK Institute of Hydrology and the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (Brazil). ABRACOS is a collaboration between the Agencia Brasileira de Cooperacao and the UK Overseas Development Administration. The processed, quality controlled and integrated data in the documented Pre-LBA data sets were originally published as a set of three CD_ROMs (Marengo and Victoria, 1998) but are now archived individually.