How well is the WDC-Soils serving its user groups?

Soil is an important provider of ecosystem services, yet it remains one of the least developed data layers in global land models and uncertainties are large. In this context, there is a pressing need for improved, quality-assessed soil information at multiple scale levels. ISRIC - World Soil Information (WDC-Soils) has a mission to serve the international community as custodian of global soil data and information, and to increase awareness and understanding of soils in major global issues. To achieve this goal, we operate according to four work streams: 'standards and reference', 'soil information brokering', 'building an effective user community' and generation of 'derived products'. Through the 'soil information brokering' work stream, in collaboration with our partners and data suppliers, we are generating an increasing range of quality-assessed soil data (point, polygon, and grid). These products are made available freely using a range of web services based on open-source software and FAIR principles. Key questions for us in this context are 'How well are we communicating with the international community' and 'what challenges do we need to address in terms of data sharing and interoperability standards?' As described in this case study, this requires regular monitoring and evaluation of the use of our products as well as an insight into the (evolving) needs of our diverse user community. This type of inventory then serves to identify emerging strategic developments in the field of soil sciences and related spatial data infrastructure, and serves to consolidate our communication strategy.