Abstract

Digital soil maps for the Democratic Republic of Congo
Track: Agriculture
Authors: Kaspar Kundert, Lebau Laurin Ngoy Mbaya

In the realm of soil sciences, digital data was almost inexistent in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and important cartographic work done previously by Institute for Agricultural Studies of the Belgian Congo (1945 - 1960) and the University of Gent (1945 - 1960) was in danger of being lost.
Given the importance of soil data for the sustainable management of DRC's natural resources, a project for digitizing, harmonizing and safe keeping of all existing data was launched. During the project, 75 large maps have been digitized and codified with a uniform legend. Since these maps are available in digital format for users of GIS.