Dataset of Soil Conservation Capacity Preventing Water Erosion in China (1992–2019)

This dataset includes annual soil conservation capacities and their impact factors in China from 1992 to 2019. These data are developed based on an improved RUSLE model to estimate potential and controlled soil erosion in China from 1992 to 2019. As important input factors, the vegetation cover and management (C) factor and rainfall erosivity (R) factor are optimized for different regions. The C-factor is optimized according to each province's farmland and non-farmland conditions. The R-factor is calculated for karst and non-karst areas separately using daily precipitation. The dataset contains nine zip files (“.rar”), which can be divided into comprehensive data and detailed data. Comprehensive data include mean values and changing rates of soil conservation capacity (SC1992-2019), the C-factor (C1992-2019), and the R-factor (R1992-2019) in China from 1992 to 2019. Detailed data include the water and soil conservation measure factor data (P_300), the soil erodibility factor data (K_300), the topographic factor data (LS_300), the R-factor data in two-year increments (R_year), the C-factor data in two-year increments (C_year), and the SC data in two-year increments (SC_year). Most data have a spatial resolution of 300 m (the resolution of the R-factor is 1 km). All the data in the zip files are raster data (“.tif”), which can be opened by GIS software like ArcMap. This dataset can support large-scale and long-term assessment of soil and water conservation potential in China. It also can serve as a basis for identifying the impacts of climate change and human activities on soil conservation services.