The demand for quantitative and updated soil information is increasing worldwide in order to deal with global concerns such as food production and climate regulation. However, traditional soil maps are not able to cope with quantitative changes as well as estimates of the state of several key soil properties. The Global Soil Map community suggests to create a three dimensional grid of these functional properties that can be updated and refined according to the demands of the users e.g. to monitor the state of the soil threats defined in the EU thematic Soil Strategy. Cost effective tools to monitor soil properties across continents are required. On the one hand novel techniques such as soil spectroscopy offer efficient alternatives for non-invasive and rapid analysis of at least some key soil properties (e.g. organic carbon and clay content). On the other hand a wealth of soil property data is being stored in geo-referenced data bases. The challenge of monitoring soil organic carbon is that a uniform and innovative methodology would be required to compare trends across countries/continents, but at the same time the approach should be flexible enough to allow updating and inserting new data for downscaling to resolve local demands.