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Temporary Dataset Download: Global Soil Erodibility

Dataset Access Expires on

23-January-2026

Notifications

  1. The data provided has been prepared for use by internal research activities in the Joint Research Centre (JRC) Ispra in collaboration with University of Basel and Soil Mission project AI4SoilHealth.
  2. The data are the result of JRC research activities and are primarily made available for further research. The JRC does not accept any liability whatsoever for any error, missing data or omission in the data, or for any loss or damage arising from its use. The JRC agrees to provide the data free of charge but is not bound to justify the content and values contained in the databases.
  3. The permission to use the data specified above is granted on condition that, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES are these data passed to third parties. They can be used for any purpose, including commercial gain.
  4. The user agrees to:
    • make proper reference to the source of the data when disseminating the results to which this agreement relates;
    • Participate in the verification of the data (e.g. by noting and reporting any errors or omissions discovered to the JRC).

Download the data. This Zip file includes three raster maps are available plus two uncertainties maps:

Title: K_factor_with_Ksat.tif
Description: The modified global soil erodibility map (Kksat factor) where the measured Ksat values were incorporated into the Wischmeier and Smith (1978) soil texture-based K factor equation.

Title: K_factor_soiltexture_Wischmeier.tif
Description: The global soil erodibility map (KWischmeier factor raster) where the Wischmeier and Smith (1978) soil texture-based K factor equation was used without Ksat modification.

Title: K_GloSEM_factor.tif
Description: The KGloSEM soil erodibility map (KGloSEM factor) was developed by Borrelli et al. (2017), where they employed soil texture as a proxy for permeability, similar to the KWischmeier factor. We used this existing map to compare it with the Kksat factor map. The original spatial resolution of this map was 250 m, however, we resampled it to 1 km for comparison.

Title: K_factor_with_Ksat_error.tif
Description: The modified global soil erodibility map (Uncertainty raster of Kksat factor) errors represented by 90% prediction intervals (PI) through quantile calculations at 0.05 and 0.95. This uncertainty assessment was performed using the quantreg option in the R package ‘ranger’ (Wright and Ziegler 2015).

Title: K_factor_soiltexture_Wischmeier_error.tif
Description: The global soil erodibility map (Uncertainty raster of KWischmeier factor) errors represented by 90% prediction intervals (PI) through quantile calculations at 0.05 and 0.95. This uncertainty assessment was performed using the quantreg option in the R package ‘ranger’ (Wright and Ziegler 2015).


Spatial coverage: World , Extent: -180.00, -62.00: 180.00, 87.3
Pixel size: 1km.
Measurement Unit: t ha h ha-1 MJ-1 mm-1
Projection: EPSG:4326 - WGS 84

Gupta, S., Borrelli, P., Panagos, P., Alewell, C., 2024. An advanced global soil erodibility (K) assessment including the effects of saturated hydraulic conductivity. Science of The Total Environment 908, 168249. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.168249

Joint Research Centre - European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC)
ID 123571
Date - Time Fri, 01/09/2026 - 16:37
Name of User Bas Ooink
Organization Blue Team Intelligence B.V.
Type of Organization Private Company
-- Other
E-mail bas.ooink@blueteam-intelligence.nl
Purpose Develop Soil Trafficability model
Notes

When making reference to the ESDAC

  • Panagos, P., Van Liedekerke, M., Borrelli, P., Köninger, J., Ballabio, C., Orgiazzi, A., Lugato, E., Liakos, L., Hervas, J., Jones, A.  Montanarella, L. 2022. European Soil Data Centre 2.0: Soil data and knowledge in support of the EU policies. European Journal of Soil Science, 73(6), e13315. DOI: 10.1111/ejss.13315
  • Panagos P., Van Liedekerke M., Jones A., Montanarella L., “European Soil Data Centre: Response to European policy support and public data requirements”; (2012) Land Use Policy, 29 (2), pp. 329-338. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2011.07.003
  • European Soil Data Centre (ESDAC), esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu, European Commission, Joint Research Centre