Soils of Russia: Correlated with the Revised Legend of the FAO Soil Map of the World and World Reference Base for Soil Resources

The \f2Soil Map of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SMR\f1; Fridlund, 1998) at scale 1:2.5 was compiled through the joint effort of many pedologists around the country. Practically all pedological centers and institutes in Russia contributed to the map their expertise and scientific knowledge accumulated during more than two decades. The map legend comprises the latest soil-genetic classification concepts in which the soil characteristics have been considered together with soil forming factors. The soil-geographical background of the map introduces a variety of geographical regularities of soil spatial distributions among which the soil zonality and the soil cover structure have been comprehensively represented. Although the \f2SMR\f1 is regarded as the major inventory document at the country scale, it is not widely known. The complexity of the legend and specific soil nomenclature have been the main factors confounding implementation of the map. To make the \f2SMR\f1 accessible, the correlation of the \f2Soil Map of the World (SMW\f1; FAO, 1998) and the \f2World Reference Base for Soil Resources\f1(WRB; FAO, 1998) was made as transparent as possible.