Global Distribution of Soil Water Holding Capacity

This data set shows the global distribution of soil water holding capacity (in mm), at field capacity for the top 30 centimeters of soil only (0-30 cm.). The data were derived from information on soil type and texture compiled by L. Zobler (1986) at a one-by-one degree latitude/longitude resolution from the FAO- Unesco Soil Map of the World (1974). The data set was developed in 1990 at the NASA/Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), Columbia University, New York City by A. F. Bouwman of the National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection (or RIVM; Bilthoven, the Netherlands) and scientists at NASA/GISS.

The legends and values for this data set (after Bouwman et al., 1986) are provided at http://www.grid.unep.ch/data/download/gnv025.zip.

The Soil Water Holding Capacity data set is a raster data file having a spatial resolution of one degree latitude/longitude, and consists of 180 rows (lines) by 360 columns (elements/pixels/samples) of data. It has an origin point of 90 degrees North latitude and 180 degrees West longitude, and extends to 90 degrees South latitude and 180 degrees East longitude. The data file is one byte per element and comprises 64.8 Kb.

A similar data set, Global Soil Texture and Derived Water-Holding Capacities (Webb et al., 2000), is archived at the ORNL DAAC (http://daac.ornl.gov/).