CLSoilMaps: A national soil gridded product for Chile

CLSOILMAPS presents a newly gridded database of soil physical properties and soil hydraulic parameters based on digital soil mapping (DSM) techniques and a pedotransfer function (Rosetta V3) at close to 100m of spatial resolution covering the continental area of Chile and binational basins shared with Argentina for six standardized depths following GlobalSoilMap project standards. Maps were based on a newly compiled soil profile database covering different land use conditions (e.g. agricultural, forest, peatland, shrubland, and Andean grassland), and several environmental covariates based on the SCORPAN soil forming factors. DSM models showed moderate to good accuracies with R2 ranging from 0.76-0.88 for bulk density, 0.50-0.76 for clay, and 0.67-0.84 for sand. Silt maps were derived from clay and sand predictions taking advantage of the compositional nature of the particle size fraction. Field capacity, permanent wilting point, total available water capacity, and Van Genuchten´s soil hydraulic parameters were derived with Rosetta V3 algorithm.