Global Soil Water Content at Field Capacity and Wilting Point, 250m Resolution

1950-2017 soil water content predictions at six standard depths, based on a global compilation of soil profiles from sources like USDA NCSS and ISRIC WISE. The data provides volumetric water content percentages at 33 kPa and 1500 kPa suctions, mapped at a 250-meter resolution. It was created by Tomislav Hengl and excludes Antarctica.

Use Cases

• Modeling plant-available water capacity based on the difference between field capacity (33 kPa) and wilting point (1500 kPa) water content.
• Assessing soil water retention characteristics for irrigation planning using the predicted water content at standard depths.
• Incorporating foundational soil hydrology parameters into larger-scale environmental or climate models.
• Validating and calibrating other soil moisture datasets or pedo-transfer functions with these laboratory-method-based maps.

Strengths

• Based on a global compilation of soil profiles from 10 sources, including USDA NCSS and ISRIC WISE.
• Provides predictions at six standard depths (0, 10, 30, 60, 100, 200 cm) for detailed vertical analysis.
• Spatial resolution is 250 meters, which is relatively fine for global soil property data.
• Uses laboratory-measured values for water content, avoiding reliance on pedo-transfer functions for these core predictions.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Antarctica is not included in the spatial coverage.

Provenance

Source

OpenLandMap / Tomislav Hengl

Collection Method

Spatial prediction from a global compilation of soil profile data, with detailed import and prediction steps documented via provided links.

Time Range

1950-2017

Geography

Global, excluding Antarctica