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Remote Sensing Derived Topsoil and Agricultural Economic Losses, Midwestern USA

Metadata Updated: July 3, 2025

This dataset provides estimates of topsoil loss and economic loss associated with decreased crop productivity resulting from topsoil loss at county- and state-levels across the Corn Belt region of the Midwestern USA. Intermediate products used to derive topsoil loss are provided and include 4 m gridded estimates of study sites elevation, curvature, slope, soil organic carbon index (SOCI), and the probability of exposed B-horizon soil. Topsoil loss at the county- and state-levels was derived from analyses of agricultural land at selected sites across the study area. From WorldView imagery, 759 fields were identified that had exposed bare soil (210 km2) and were grouped into 28 sites. Gridded estimates of the SOCI and of the probability of exposed B-horizon soil were determined for each field within the sites. Topography measures, including elevation (m), curvature (m-1), and slope (deg), were extracted over the entire study area from LiDAR-derived digital elevation models at a 4 m resolution acquired from 2003-2018. Within each of the 28 study sites, the SOCI and topographic curvature values were extracted from co-located pixels. Topsoil loss was estimated from the relationship between subsoil exposure and topography and averaged across each site.The relationship between topsoil loss and topographic curvature was used to up-scale and predict topsoil and economic losses at the county and state-levels across the entire 375,000 km2 study area. The data have been used to demonstrate a robust and scalable method for estimating the magnitude of erosion in agricultural landscapes.

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.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date July 3, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date July 3, 2025
Publisher ORNL_DAAC
Maintainer
Identifier 10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1774
Data Last Modified 2025-07-02
Category Earth Science
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
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 99f5081a-06f3-490e-96de-344671704d73
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Old Spatial {"WestBoundingCoordinate":-97.3245,"NorthBoundingCoordinate":46.0461,"EastBoundingCoordinate":-86.986,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":40.0397},"CARTESIAN"
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 9cc528fd745844214bd4d2a3993640b59122a72e2860e65f667618f032f0e9c5
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial

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