Publication Date:
2015-12-15
Description:
Earth's terrestrial near-subsurface environment can be divided into relatively porous layers of soil, immobile regolith, and sedimentary deposits above unweathered bedrock. Variations in the thicknesses of these layers control the hydrologic and biogeochemical responses of landscapes. Currently, Earth System Models approximate the thickness of these relatively permeable layers above bedrock as uniform globally, despite the fact that their thicknesses vary systematically with topography, climate, and geology. To meet the need for more realistic input data for models, we developed a high-resolution gridded global dataset of the average thicknesses of soil, intact regolith, and sedimentary deposits within each 30 arcsecond (∼1 km) pixel using the best available data for topography, climate, and geology as input. Our dataset partitions the global land surface into upland hillslope, upland valley bottom, and lowland landscape components and uses models optimized for each landform type to estimate the thicknesses of each subsurface layer. On hillslopes, the dataset is calibrated and validated using independent datasets of measured soil thicknesses from the U.S. and Europe and on lowlands using depth to bedrock observations from groundwater wells in the U.S. We anticipate that the dataset will prove useful as an input to regional and global hydrological and ecosystems models. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Electronic ISSN:
1942-2466
Topics:
Geography
,
Geosciences
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