Soil bulk density, clay content, organic carbon, and pH values for agricultural lands in counties across the contiguous United States. The data was assembled in the mid-1990s from EPA and FAO sources to drive greenhouse gas modeling with the DNDC agro-ecosystem model. High and low values represent the range of each property found within a county.
Use Cases
- Modeling soil carbon sequestration potential based on soil organic carbon and bulk density values.
- Assessing regional crop suitability based on soil pH and clay content ranges.
- Driving agro-ecosystem models like DNDC with county-level soil property inputs.
- Analyzing spatial variability of soil properties across US agricultural counties.
Strengths
- Data covers the contiguous United States at the county level.
- Provides high and low values for each property, indicating the range within a county.
- Sources are documented as EPA and FAO databases from the 1990s.
Limitations
- Last updated 1990-12-31 23:59:59.999000; freshness should be verified.
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- pH data was derived from a coarse-resolution map, resulting in single values for many counties.
Provenance
- Source
- EPA (SOC, clay, bulk density) and FAO (pH), via EOS-WEBSTER/SCIOPS.
- Collection Method
- Derived from national databases and a printed pH map overlaid with state boundaries.
- Time Range
- Mid-1990s assembly period; source data from 1985-1995.
- Geography
- Counties in the contiguous United States.