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In the late 1970’s it was proposed to undertake an inventory of the soils of Scotland allied to the reconnaissance scale 1:250 000 national soil mapping programme. This National Soil Inventory of Scotland (NSIS) was to comprise environmental, soil morphological and analytical data. The aim was to provide statistical summaries of soil characteristics at a number of levels, that is, for all Scotland, for regional subdivisions (geographic or geopolitical), for major soil groups and subgroups, for large, extensive soil map units and for displaying regional trends in soil properties. The Inventory was based on a systematic sampling scheme aligned with the Ordnance Survey national grid which has its origin at a latitude of 49 degrees 45 minutes and 58 seconds North and a longitude of 7 degrees 33 minutes 23 seconds West which is located southwest of the Isles of Scilly. The soil profiles at each 5km grid intersects were only described with the information recorded on a proscribed ‘proforma (known as a ‘profile description card’, see Appendix 1) using standardised terminology (Appendi