New paper: Global mapping of volumetric water retention

A new open access paper from ISRIC – World Soil Information is now available: “Global mapping of volumetric water retention at 100, 330 and 15,000 cm suction using the WoSIS database” published in International Soil and Water Conservation Research.

The work presented in the paper developed point-based global maps with estimated uncertainty of the volumetric soil water retention (SWR) at 100, 330 and 15,000 cm suction using measured and estimated SWR data and compared them with similar available products from the literature.

Access the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iswcr.2022.08.001

The lead author on the paper is Maria Eliza Turek who was a guest researcher at ISRIC from September 2020 – April 2021 through the Climate, Food and Farming, Global Research Alliance Development Scholarships (CLIFF - GRADS) program. CLIFF – GRADS is a program of the CGIAR Research Program on Low-Emission Food Systems. The Global Research Alliance (GRA) annually awards PhD fellowships relating to the "measurement and management of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon storage in agricultural systems" to early-career scientist from developing countries.

Since Maria Eliza completed the CLIFF-GRADS fellowship with ISRIC, she successfully defended her PhD at Federal University of Paraná in Brazil and is now doing a post-doc at Agroscope in Switzerland.

“The CLIFF-GRADS fellowship opened a lot of new doors for me, allowed me to learn so much, and discuss science with so many people. I am very proud and thankful to have been part of the ISRIC team and hope we have more opportunities to collaborate in the future,” said Maria Eliza. Her overall research experience includes a background in soil physics and environmental modelling.

“Maria Eliza is a very enthusiastic, friendly and dedicated researcher. She also worked efficiently under COVID restrictions,” said ISRIC senior soil scientist Niels Batjes. “Hosting CLIFF-GRADS students is generally very beneficial for ISRIC as they can devote much time to a particular issue of strategic importance to us.”