The NCSCD is based on polygons from different regional soils maps homogenized to the U.S. Soil Taxonomy. The database contains information on fractions of coverage of different soil taxa as well as storage of soil organic carbon (hg/m2) between 0–300 cm depth. The data is stored as multiple netCDF-files (one file per described parameter). There are separate zipped data-folders with: (1) merged circumpolar datasets at different spatial resolutions (grid sizes: 1°, 0.5°, 0.25°, 0.1°, 0.05° and 0.012°) (2) all regions in folders with files projected in the Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area (LAEA) projection and (grid size: 1000 m) (3) all regions in separate netCDF-files with geographic latitude/longitude coordinates (WGS84; grid size: 0.012°).
For a detailed scientific description of the creation of the NCSCDv2 and the gridded dataset available see this paper published in the journal Earth System Science Data Discussion. Please refer to this paper if you make use of any dataset downloaded from this site: