Soil Files

The subdirectories from this level contain soil profiles for various soil parameters. There are subdirectories for mineral soils, organic soils, and also for total soil content.

The protocol for filenames is CVVL_mM, or for average soils CVVL_ave where C is the soil component type, VV the variable name and L the level.

User's Guide

USING THE SVF FILES

A description of how to use the SVF format files is presented here. Included in this description are methods for transforming information between the formats of lat/lon, gridpoint, and file position. The file is also available in downloadable format:

SVF_FORMAT

SOIL COMPONENT TYPE C

M - Mineral soil component
O - Organic soil component
T - Total, ie both components combined

VARIABLE NAME VV

A............ Area [km**2]
AP.......... Mode area [%]
BD......... Bulk density [g/cm**3]
CL.......... Clay [% by weight]
RF.......... Rock fragments [% by volume]
SA.......... Sand [% by weight]
SI............ Silt [% by weight]
SOC....... Soil organic carbon (0-100 cm) [Mega-grams of Carbon/hectare]
SOC20... Soil organic carbon (0- 20 cm) [Mega-grams of Carbon/hectare]
WH........ Water holding capacity [cm H2O]
Z............. Depth [cm]

LAYER L

1: 0 -- 50 cm
2: 50 -- 150 cm
3: 0 -- 100 cm
4: 0 -- 20 cm

MODE ID mM

The letter 'm' followed by the modal soil profile id number. M ranges from 1 to 4 with 1 representing the most dominant profile. For average soil profiles the 'mM' is substituted by 'ave'.

When a modal soil is not present, the cell is set to a value of -98 (before scaling for storage). If a mode is absent, no additional modal soil profiles are present for the cell from that mode level on.

FILES AVAILABLE

README.SOL
SVF_FORMAT

The file modes applies to all soils files so is listed separately here.

modes: The number of modal soil profiles per cell
Units: [1--4]
Scaling factor: 1

The variables contained in each subdirectory are further explained on the corresponding page:

Mineral
Organic
Total

These same files are also listed in tared and compressed format here. This is a quicker way to download several files at once.

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