Global Soil Erodibility - Renard K-Factor
Global raster for soil erodibility (USLE K factor) using the Renard K-factor calculation. This method implements equation 3-5 in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Handbook No. 703, which is based on soil particle size, using global sand, silt and clay raster data from ISRIC SoilGrids. The original equation creates results with U.S. customary units, and these have been converted to metric using the factor 0.1317, as described in Foster 1981. Note that of the four K-factor methods that we compared with each other and external data sources (Renard, EPIC, Williams 1996 and Wischmeier 1971), this method by Renard was an outlier in its patterns of high and low values. Still, it is a commonly-used equation when soil data are limited, so it may be worth comparing this map with others to see how well it reflects the soil conditions in your study area. More information on source code and source citations can be found in the lineage section of the metadata YML file.
ERODIBILITY
GLOBAL