RisQue: Modeled Soil Water Balance and Fire Risk for the Amazon Basin, 1995-2001

RisQue (Risco de Queimadas) is a GIS soil-water balance model output for the Amazon Basin. It provides monthly estimates of precipitation, evapotranspiration, and maximum plant-available soil water at 10 m depth from 1995 through 2001 at an 8 km resolution. The model was developed using 1,565 RADAMBRASIL soil texture profiles and satellite-derived radiation data.

Use Cases

• Analyzing spatial and temporal drought patterns in moist tropical forests based on modeled soil water content.
• Investigating relationships between drought and forest fire regimes using fire risk (Risco de Queimadas) model outputs.
• Validating other hydrological or climate models with monthly precipitation and evapotranspiration data at 8 km resolution.
• Studying long-term soil moisture trends in the Amazon Basin from 1995 to 2001.

Strengths

• Model is grounded in a substantial empirical base, using 1,565 soil texture profiles.
• Provides a consistent monthly time series across a seven-year period (1995-2001).
• Data is available in standard, interoperable geospatial formats (GeoTIFF, ASCII Grid).

Limitations

• Spatial resolution is coarse (8 km), which may not capture local-scale variability.
• Conflicting 'last updated' metadata (2001 vs. 2026) creates uncertainty about provenance and maintenance.
• Complete column names and detailed documentation are not provided in the available metadata.

Provenance

Source

ORNL_CLOUD

Collection Method

Output from the RisQue GIS model, which uses the Penman-Monteith equation, satellite radiation data, and interpolated soil texture profiles.

Time Range

1995-2001

Freshness

2026-04-10 01:46:00.405694

Geography

Amazon Basin