BonaRes soil profile database

API Guide

Public, standards-based access to published soil profile locations is available through OGC API - Features. Use it directly from QGIS, Python or any HTTP client. This page documents the canonical public geospatial interface.

OGC landing page ↗ OGC conformance ↗ OGC OpenAPI definition ↗ Schema.org DataCatalog ↗ DCAT JSON-LD ↗ OAI-PMH ↗

What you can do

  • Discover the service, conformance declaration and soil-profiles collection.
  • Read published profile locations as GeoJSON in CRS84 or EPSG:3857.
  • Filter by bounding box and observation time, sort and paginate results.

The OGC collection is public, read-only and contains published records only. Drafts and synchronization operations are intentionally kept out of the public OGC surface.

Discovery and metadata harvesting

Canonical dataset pages publish Schema.org Dataset JSON-LD. The complete catalogue is also available as Schema.org and DCAT JSON-LD. OpenAIRE-compatible records with production DOIs are exposed through OAI-PMH using the oai_datacite metadata format and the openaire_data set.

/catalog.jsonldSchema.org DataCatalog and Dataset records.
/dcat.jsonldW3C DCAT catalogue serialized as JSON-LD.
/oai/?verb=IdentifyOAI-PMH 2.0 repository identification.
/oai/?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&set=openaire_dataDataCite records for OpenAIRE harvesting.

OGC API - Features

The canonical geospatial interface is rooted at /api/v1/ogc/. It implements OGC API - Features Part 1 Core and GeoJSON, plus Part 2 coordinate reference systems. The Core, GeoJSON and CRS conformance classes have passed the official OGC test suite.

  • Default CRS: OGC CRS84 (longitude, latitude).
  • Alternative CRS: EPSG:3857 using crs and bbox-crs.
  • Filters: bbox, datetime, limit, offset and sortby.
  • Media type: feature responses use application/geo+json.
Path Purpose
/api/v1/ogc/Landing page and discovery links.
/api/v1/ogc/conformanceImplemented OGC conformance classes.
/api/v1/ogc/apiOpenAPI 3 definition for this service.
/api/v1/ogc/collectionsCollection catalogue.
/api/v1/ogc/collections/soil-profilesCollection metadata and spatial extent.
/api/v1/ogc/collections/soil-profiles/itemsPublished profile features as GeoJSON.

Connect from QGIS

  1. Open Layer → Add Layer → Add WFS / OGC API - Features Layer.
  2. Create a new connection and use this service URL: 
    https://soilprofiles-e.dataservice.zalf.de/api/v1/ogc/
  3. Connect, select soil-profiles, and add the layer. No login is required for published features.

The service was also opened successfully as an OAPIF data source by GDAL/OGR. For a direct GeoJSON request, use the items URL below. 

https://soilprofiles-e.dataservice.zalf.de/api/v1/ogc/collections/soil-profiles/items?limit=100

OGC example in Python

import geopandas as gpd

url = "https://soilprofiles-e.dataservice.zalf.de/api/v1/ogc/collections/soil-profiles/items"
profiles = gpd.read_file(url + "?bbox=9,51,15,53&limit=100")
print(profiles[["profileNumber", "geometry"]].head())