Soil Hydraulic Parameter Maps For Tropical South America

Tropical South America surface soil data provides gridded parameter maps for four widely-used soil hydraulic models: Brooks and Corey, Campbell, van Genuchten-Mualem, and van Genuchten-Burdine. The dataset addresses a lack of good hydraulic parameterizations for land surface model simulations in tropical regions. It was published by the Environmental Information Data Centre and last updated in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Configure soil hydraulics sub-models in JULES or similar land surface models using the provided Brooks and Corey, Campbell, van Genuchten-Mualem, and van Genuchten-Burdine parameter maps.
• Compare optimal hydraulic parameter values across the four different soil hydraulic models for the same tropical South American grid cells.
• Fill gaps in soil hydraulic parameterizations for tropical regions to improve simulations of soil profile water movement in land surface models.
• Analyze spatial patterns of surface soil hydraulic properties derived from pedotransfer functions across the Amazon and Amazonia.

Strengths

• Provides parameter maps for four distinct and widely-used soil hydraulic models, enabling model comparison and selection.
• Specifically targets the data-scarce tropical region of South America, filling a recognized gap.
• Data is hosted by the Environmental Information Data Centre and has a persistent DOI for citation and access.

Limitations

• Parameters are derived from pedotransfer functions, which are estimations and may not reflect direct field measurements.
• The spatial resolution of the gridded maps is not specified in the provided input.
• The dataset's scope is limited to surface soils and does not include parameters for deeper soil profiles.

Provenance

Source

Environmental Information Data Centre

Collection Method

Derived from pedotransfer functions applied to source spatial data.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated March 2026.

Geography

Tropical South America, including the Amazon and Amazonia regions.