Soil geomorphic unit and ecological site group maps for the rangelands of the Upper Colorado River Basin region

This data release includes maps characterizing soil geomorphic units (SGUs), climate zones, and ecological site groups that classify landscapes by ecological potential and behavior for use in land management in the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB) region. Soil geomorphic units were created by analysis and grouping of ecological sites (ESs), a more detailed local system of ecological units managed by the National Cooperative Soil Survey (NCSS). Vegetation reference community production data of ESs were analyzed to determine discrete rules based on field soils data linked to the soil survey geographic (SSURGO) database of the USA to determine SGUs. Then both reference production data and state and transition model (STM) state attribution data were used to optimize combination of potential climate zone breaks with SGUs to determine final ecological site groups (ESGs). A non-parameteric Manova framework was used for all analysis in creating SGUs and ESGs to find groupings that best discerned differences in reference production and STMs. These groups, and the associated climate zones are mapped at 30m resolution for this data release. Mapping was done using a digital soil mapping workflow that linked field soil descriptions keyed to SGU to environmental raster covariates (e.g. digital elevation model) to create a predictive mapping model. The ESGs were then created by overlaying various climate surfaces with the SGUs to reclassify pixels. The SGU predictions are provided as the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd most probable class for each pixel based on the underlying random forest model probabilities.