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Predictive soil property map: Soil pH

Metadata Updated: September 16, 2025

These data were compiled to demonstrate new predictive mapping approaches and provide comprehensive gridded 30-meter resolution soil property maps for the Colorado River Basin above Hoover Dam. Random forest models related environmental raster layers representing soil forming factors with field samples to render predictive maps that interpolate between sample locations. Maps represented soil pH, texture fractions (sand, silt clay, fine sand, very fine sand), rock, electrical conductivity (ec), gypsum, CaCO3, sodium adsorption ratio (sar), available water capacity (awc), bulk density (dbovendry), erodibility (kwfact), and organic matter (om) at 7 depths (0, 5, 15, 30, 60, 100, and 200 cm) as well as depth to restrictive layer (resdept) and surface rock size and cover. Accuracy and error estimated using a 10-fold cross validation indicated a range of model performances with coefficient of variation (R2) for models ranging from 0.20 to 0.76 with mean of 0.52 and a standard deviation of 0.12. Models of pH, om and ec had the best accuracy (R2 > 0.6). Most texture fractions, CaCO3, and SAR models had R2 values from 0.5-0.6. Models of kwfact, dbovendry, resdept, rock models, gypsum and awc had R2 values from 0.4-0.5 excepting near surface models which tended to perform better. Very fine sands and 200 cm estimates for other models generally performed poorly (R2 from 0.2-0.4), and sample size for the 200 cm models was too low for reliable model building. More than 90% of the soils data used was sampled since 2000, but some older samples are included. Uncertainty estimates were also developed by creating relative prediction intervals, which allow end users to evaluate uncertainty easily.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 16, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 16, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-5e90b3b482ce172707ed76f7
Data Last Modified 2020-08-27T00:00:00Z
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id b641184a-3601-4ed6-b50b-282119e2b12e
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -116.0000, 33.3000, -105.2000, 44.0000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 9e4249393c8075802eb02765bd01979d773de5102f5913d03c4d36915d3a4c99
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -116.0000, 33.3000, -116.0000, 44.0000, -105.2000, 44.0000, -105.2000, 33.3000, -116.0000, 33.3000}

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