CLSoilMaps: A national soil gridded database of physical and hydraulic soil properties for Chile

Abstract

Spatially explicit soil information is crucial for comprehending and managing many of Earth´s processes related to carbon, water, and other biogeochemical cycles. We introduced a gridded database of soil physical properties and hydraulic parameters at 100 meters spatial resolution. It covers the continental area of Chile and binational basins shared with Argentina for six standardized depths following the specifications of the GlobalSoilMap project. We generated soil maps based on digital soil mapping techniques based on more than 4000 observations, including unpublished data from remote areas. These maps were used as input for the pedotransfer function Rosetta V3 to obtain predictions of soil hydraulic properties, such as field capacity, permanent wilting point, total available water capacity, and other parameters of the water retention curve. The trained models outperformed several other DSM studies applied at the national and regional scale for soil physical properties (nRMSE ranging from 6.93% to 15.7%) and delivered acceptable predictions (nRMSE ranging from 10.4% to 15.6%) for soil hydraulic properties, making them suitable for countless environmental studies.