Soil is a key natural resource that provides the foundation of basic ecosystem services. Soil determines the types of farms and forests that can grow on a landscape. Soil filters water. Soil helps regulate the Earth's climate by storing large amounts of carbon. Activities that degrade soils reduce the value of the ecosystem services that soil provides. For example, since 1850 35% of human caused green house gas emissions are linked to land use change. The Soil Science Society of America is a good source of of additional information.Many hydrologic processes are affected by the properties of the soil. The amount and timing or run off from a storm is related to how fast soil absorbs water. and the physical structure of the soil affects the amount of water that can be stored in the ground.This map provides access to a 30 arc-second (roughly 1 km) cell-sized raster with attributes related to soil hydrology derived from the Harmonized World Soil Database v 1.2. The values in this layer are for the dominant soil in each mapping unit.This map is part of a larger collection of landscape layers that you can use to perform a wide variety of mapping and analysis tasks.To learn more see the World Soils Harmonized World Soil Database - Hydric layer in the landscape layers group.The authors of this data set request that projects using these data include the following citation:FAO/IIASA/ISRIC/ISSCAS/JRC, 2012. Harmonized World Soil Database (version 1.2). FAO, Rome, Italy and IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria.
