Physical Properties – Soil Types

In this section we describe the topsoil maps and parameters used by various parts of the SCALGO Live system. For instance, some, or all, of these are used in the Flash Flood Map with infiltration and drainage and in Core+ DynamicFlood. We refer to the documentation of those analyses for more information about how and why the soil parameters are used.  

We define a set of topsoil types based on the composition of the soil, mainly in terms of dominant grain sizes. In order to create a map of topsoil for each country, we evaluate the dominant grain sizes in each of the types in the country's geological soil map, and then use our land cover map, and other information, to modify the soil map to better represent the top layer of soil. This process is described in more detail in the mapping section. Finally, we assign Horton parameters and porosity to different compaction levels of each of our topsoil types, as described in the properties section.