Large amount of paper soil maps and archives as well as data from soil surveys were kept by diferent counties and provinces in China. For integrating soil information from heterogeneous resources, however, the existing methods cannot solve the scientific and technical challenges and problems. Combining the methods of soil science, artificial intelligence, data science and cartography, a new method for integrating and mapping big data of soil has been developed, which is 80 times more efcient than the conventional approach. By using the new approach, high-resolution digital soil maps containing nine map layers and covering the whole country have been created. The precision soil information provided by high resolution digital soil maps of China has been applied to take care of arable land, control non-point source pollution, protect farmland, etc., which benefited hundreds of millions of farmers and diferent branches.

The high-resolution digital soil maps of China consisting of 9 map layers