A Gram-stain-negative, strictly aerobic bacterium, designated R1-4T, was isolated from soil from a military shooting range in the Republic of Korea. Cells were non-motile short rods, oxidase-positive and catalase-negative. Growth of R1-4T was observed at 15-45 °C (optimum, 30 °C) and pH 6.0-9.0 (optimum, pH 7.0). R1-4T contained summed feature 8 (comprising C18 : 1ω7c/C18 : 1ω6c), summed feature 3 (comprising C16 : 1ω7c/C16 : 1ω6c), cyclo-C19 : 0ω8c and C16 : 0 as the major fatty acids and ubiquinone-10 as the sole isoprenoid quinone. Phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, diphosphatidylglycerol, sphingoglycolipid, phosphatidylcholine, an unknown glycolipid and four unknown lipids were detected as polar lipids. The major polyamine was spermidine. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 64.4 mol%. The results of phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated that R1-4T formed a tight phylogenetic lineage with Novosphingobium sediminicola HU1-AH51T within the genus Novosphingobium. R1-4T was most closely related to N. sediminicola HU1-AH51T with a 98.8 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity. The DNA-DNA relatedness between R1-4T and the type strain of N. sediminicola was 37.8±4.2 %. On the basis of phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and molecular properties, it is clear that R1-4T represents a novel species of the genus Novosphingobium, for which the name Novosphingobium humi sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is R1-4T (=KACC 19094T=JCM 31879T).