Soils of Latin American and the Caribbean

For those of you who, like me, sometimes work in areas of Latin America or the Caribbean where soil data are rare, difficult to obtain, unpublished, or simply unavailable, there is a very useful new work that I'm finding helpful: Atlas de suelos de América Latina y el Caribe.

It includes complete maps of the region, although they are published at a scale of 1:3,000,000 which can make identification of the location of individual sites difficult. Nonetheless, I have found it an extremely useful work. Not only are the maps helpful, but the soil taxonomy is explained with great simplicity and clarity, which is convenient for an archaeologist with no meaningful training in soil science.

Here is the citation suggested in the front matter of the document:

Gardi, C., Angelini, M., Barceló, S., Comerma, J., Cruz Gaistardo, C., Encina Rojas, A., Jones, A., Krasilnikov, P., Mendonça Santos Brefin, M.L., Montanarella, L., Muñiz Ugarte, O., Schad, P., Vara Rodríguez, M.I., Vargas, R. (eds), 2014. Atlas de suelos de América Latina y el Caribe, Comisión Europea - Oficina de Publicaciones de la Unión Europea, L-2995 Luxembourg.

Even better, it's available online at:  http://www.fao.org/agronoticias/agro-publicaciones/agro-publicacion-detalle/en/c/239323/

Cheers!