Soil Retention Natural Cover Factor
This layer maps the RUSLE cover-management factor of each cell's natural cover, the reference of the Soil and sediment retention level in Resilience.
Source: ESDAC EU C-factor (Panagos et al. 2015), ESA CCI Land Cover 2020, WWF TEOW biomes Year: Not stated in the layer definition (built on ESA CCI Land Cover 2020) Category: Scenario Format: Raster grid (COG), 1/40 degree Used in risk analysis: Context only. It is the reference of Soil Retention Degradation; Resilience does not read this layer as a level.
What it shows
This layer shows the cover-management factor C of the RUSLE erosion model for the natural cover of each cell. C says how well a cover protects the soil from water erosion: the lower the value, the better protected the soil.
It is the reference of the Soil and sediment retention level. Soil Retention Degradation compares today's erosion with the erosion the cell would have under this natural cover.
How it is built
The layer holds one value per WWF biome. That value is the median ESDAC C over the ESA CCI land-cover classes that make up the biome's potential cover. Biomes outside Europe take the European value of their cover type.
Values by biome:
| Biome | C factor |
|---|---|
| Forest biomes | 0.0009-0.0013 |
| Mediterranean | 0.0020 |
| Tundra | 0.037 |
| Other grasslands | 0.079 |
| Temperate grassland | 0.120 |
| Deserts | 0.170 |
The layer is a state, and it is deliberately not tagged as a shock layer.
How to read it
C is dimensionless. A lower value means better protected soil. Forests sit at the bottom of the scale and deserts at the top. The colour ramp ends at 0.08, below the values of grasslands and deserts. Because each biome takes one value, the layer shows biome boundaries rather than local land cover.
Source
RUSLE2016 and EU C-factor (Panagos et al. 2015, 2020, JRC/ESDAC) · Global soil erodibility (Panagos et al. 2024, JRC/ESDAC) · ESA CCI Land Cover 2020 (C3S) · WWF Terrestrial Ecoregions (Olson et al. 2001) · GMTED2010 (USGS) · GloREDa and projected rainfall erosivity, 19 GCMs (JRC/ESDAC) · GloSEM land-use trend (Borrelli et al. 2020).
The ESDAC datasets are under the ESDAC data licence (registration, no redistribution of the data). GMTED2010 is public domain. The licences of ESA CCI Land Cover and WWF Terrestrial Ecoregions are not confirmed.
Related pages: Soil Retention Degradation, Soil protection shock, Loss of soil and sediment retention.
Legend
Symbolised field: C factor, natural cover
| Value | Colour |
|---|---|
| 0 | #006837 |
| 0.02 | #66bd63 |
| 0.04 | #d9ef8b |
| 0.06 | #fdae61 |
| 0.08 | #a50026 |
Generated from darwin/layers/layer-soil-retention-c-natural.toml (develop).