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SoilGrids — available properties#

The soilgrids backend ships 11 curated soil properties, each served as an independent OGC WCS at maps.isric.org. Pick one or more with variables=. Every property is a static global 250 m prediction; the default output CRS is EPSG:4326.

Properties, units, and scale factors#

Values are scaled integers — divide a stored pixel value by the scale factor to get the conventional unit (the backend does not rescale; the GeoTIFF holds the raw integers). The no-data sentinel is -32768.

variables= id Property Stored units ÷ factor Conventional units
bdod Bulk density of the fine earth fraction cg/cm³ 100 kg/dm³
cec Cation exchange capacity (pH 7) mmol(c)/kg 10 cmol(c)/kg
cfvo Volumetric fraction of coarse fragments (> 2 mm) cm³/dm³ 10 cm³/100cm³ (vol %)
clay Clay (< 0.002 mm) mass fraction g/kg 10 %
nitrogen Total nitrogen cg/kg 100 g/kg
ocd Organic carbon density hg/m³ 10 kg/m³
ocs Organic carbon stock (0–30 cm) t/ha 10 kg/m²
phh2o Soil pH in H₂O pH ×10 10 pH
sand Sand (0.05–2 mm) mass fraction g/kg 10 %
silt Silt (0.002–0.05 mm) mass fraction g/kg 10 %
soc Soil organic carbon content dg/kg 10 g/kg

Depths#

All properties except ocs publish the six standard depth intervals; pick them with depths=:

0-5cm, 5-15cm, 15-30cm, 30-60cm, 60-100cm, 100-200cm.

ocs (organic carbon stock) is the exception — it is published for a single 0-30cm interval only.

Quantiles / layers#

Each (property, depth) is served as five statistical layers; pick them with quantiles= (the default is mean):

quantiles= id Layer
mean Mean of the prediction (the default)
Q0.05 5th percentile of the prediction
Q0.5 Median (50th percentile)
Q0.95 95th percentile of the prediction
uncertainty Prediction uncertainty (ratio of the 90 % interval to the median)

A request expands to the Cartesian product of the selected properties × depths × quantiles, one GeoTIFF per cell named <property>_<depth>_<quantile>.tif. With no depths= / quantiles=, the default is every depth at the mean layer.

The categorical WRB soil-classification service that SoilGrids also publishes is out of scope for this numeric property/depth/quantile catalog.