The International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS) - at its seventh congress, Madison, Wisconsin, USA, in 1960 - highlighted the need for publicly available soil maps at the level of continents and major regions. Subsequently, FAO and UNESCO in 1961 began the project of the Soil Map of the World at a scale of 1: 5 000 000 and. The project was completed over a period of twenty years and 19 map sheets were produced. It was the fruit of worldwide collaboration between countless soil scientists, and it has remained the only global overview of soil resources until recently. The FAO-Unesco Soil Map of the World was published in 10 volumes and 19 map sheets, from 1972 to 1977. The following high resolution scanned copy of the map sheets are now available for download: I) Legend; II) North America (Sh. 1-2) III) Mexico & Central America (not available) IV) South America (Sh. 1-2) (not available) V) Europe (Sh. 1-2) VI) Africa (Sh. 1-2-3) VII) South Asia (Sh. 1-2) VIII) North & Central Asia (Sh. 1-2-3) IX) Southeast Asia (not available) X) Australasia (Sh. 1-2)

This original full resolution land cover has been produced from visual interpretation of digitally enhanced LANDSAT 5TM images (30 m resolution), acquired mainly in the period 2007-2008. The land cover classes have been developed using the FAO/UNEP international standard LCCS classification system. This database can be analyzed in the GLCN software Advanced Database Gateway (ADG), which provides a user-friendly interface and advanced functionalities to breakdown the LCCS classes in their classifiers for further aggregations and analysis. Source: Programa Conjunto "Construyendo Capacidades para el desarrollo" 2007-2010 entre el Gobierno de la Républica Oriental del Uruguay y el Sistema de Nationes Unidas en Uruguay. Experiencia Piloto "Unidos en la Acción". RENARE/MGAP/DINAMA/DINOT/MVOTMA