The HWSD is a 30 arc-second raster database with over 16000 different soil mapping units that combines existing regional and national updates of soil information worldwide (SOTER, ESD, Soil Map of China, WISE) with the information contained within the 1:5 000 000 scale FAO-UNESCO Soil Map of the World (FAO, 19711981). The resulting raster database consists of 21600 rows and 43200 columns, which are linked to harmonized soil property data. The use of a standardized structure allows for the linkage of the attribute data with the raster map to display or query the composition in terms of soil units and the characterization of selected soil parameters (organic Carbon, pH, water storage capacity, soil depth, cation exchange capacity of the soil and the clay fraction, total exchangeable nutrients, lime and gypsum contents, sodium exchange percentage, salinity, textural class and granulometry). An iterative calculation procedure has been implemented to estimate land cover class weights, consistent with aggregate FAO land statistics and spatial land cover patterns obtained from (the above mentioned) remotely sensed data, allowing the quantification of major land use/land cover shares in individual 5’ by 5’ latitude/longitude grid cells. The estimated class weights define for each land cover class the presence of respectively cultivated land and forest. Starting values of class weights used in the iterative procedure were obtained by cross-country regression of statistical data of cultivated and forest land against land cover class distributions obtained from GIS, aggregated to national level. The percentage of urban/built-up land in a grid-cell was estimated based on presence of respective land cover classes as well as regression equations relating built-up land with number of people and population density. Remaining areas were allocated to: grassland and other vegetated areas (excluding cultivated land and forest); barren or very sparsely vegetated areas, and water bodies according to indicated land cover classes. Barren or very sparsely vegetated areas (class (ii) above) were delineated from (i) using the respective land cover information in GLC 2000 and a minimum bio-productivity threshold. The resulting seven land use land cover categories shares are: Rain-fed cultivated land; Irrigated cultivated land; Forest; Pastures and other vegetated land;Barren and very sparsely vegetated land; Water; andUrban land and land required for housing and infrastructure.