This site uses a map and a series of menus to give you access to soil information from the Scottish soils archive which is hosted by and belongs to The James Hutton Institute.

Start the process by using the map on the right to zoom to your location. You can enter postcode, coordinate or zoom and pan around the map. Once you have centred the map with your location of interest under the ‘+’ in the middle of the map click on the button below the map to find the soil unit at the location. Alternatively if you already know the soil map unit you can select it from the menu to the left of this text.

When the system has identified the soil map unit it will return a menu with the soil types that make up the map unit. The soil types are named after the area where they were first found, thus Forfar soils were first mapped around the town of Forfar.

In the results section, you will see a brief description of the different soils found in that area to allow you to select the one that most closely matches your own sample. You are then able to select a range of soil properties for that specific soil type and choose whether to display results for cultivated or semi-natural soils.

If your soil sample has a value for a specific soil property that lies within the box surrounding the red dot (which is the median value), then your soil has a value in the same range as 66% percent of all those particular soil types. If it is outwith the box but lies along the line then it is close to the maximum (above the box) or minimum (below the box) values recorded in our database.

For properties such as pH, carbon content, loss on ignition and calcium content which all affect plant growth, it is important to try to maintain these at optimum levels. If your sample is below the box on the graph, particularly for topsoils (Ap horizons) then you may need to think about adding lime or organic matter to you soil.

You can restart the process by selecting from any visible menu or by clicking on the banner at the upper right or by reloading the page.

Postcode: 

Latitude:  Longitude: 

OS Block and 6 or 8 figure (e.g. NJ 905047):