About Geotanih
The Department of Agriculture Malaysia is the lead agency and custodian for soil information in Peninsular
Malaysia. It is responsible for carrying out soil survey and mapping for Peninsular Malaysia through a
systematic soil survey program and maintaining the database of registered soil type. The products of these
surveys are soil maps and soil reports. A soil map shows the distribution of soil types in a particular area
while the accompanying report gives the descriptions and evaluation of soil and crop suitability for that area.
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The basic soil-mapping unit is Soil Series which is named after the place (town, estates or village) where
it was first described and classified, and no similarity in its set of properties with previous soil series in the
database. For cartographic purposes, soil series that have been mapped are then represented spatially
on the map either as single units or in combination with other soil series as in soil associations and soil
complexes to show their distributions and extents.
The soil series are differentiated mainly on the basis of significant variations in morphological, chemical and
mineralogical properties of the soil. These properties include mainly the type, thickness and arrangement
of horizons, and their structure, colour, texture, consistency, content of carbonates and other salts, content
of humus and mineralogical composition. To date, the total of 323 soil series have been established in
Peninsular Malaysia.
The purpose of this soils portal is to highlight the profile description, analytical data and the suitability evaluation
for common soil series in Peninsular Malaysia which have been gathered during soil survey mapping and
soil correlation tour.
Geotanih (geo – geography; tanih – soil) is a soil information system developed by Soil Resource Management Division, Department
of Agriculture Malaysia (DOA). DOA is a lead agency and custodian for soil information in Peninsular Malaysia. DOA also
responsible in soil survey, for soil mapping and maintaining the registered database.
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