Indicator: Water Holding Capacity Potential

Indicator	Water Holding Capacity Potential
Description	Plot-level forecast of future water holding capacity under different land management scenarios (e.g., reduced or no-till, increased carbon input). This forecast runs for 20 years and is related to the below ground carbon potential indicator.
Unit	m³ (total and per hectare)
Temporal Resolution	Projection into the future
Spatial Resolution	100m
Data	Satellite data (SMAP, SMOS, Landsat, MODIS, Sentinel 2); ISRIC SoilGrids v2.
Method	Future projections of Water Holding Capacity are generated using a conversion via a pedotransfer function, which utilizes soil organic carbon forecasts derived from various land-use scenarios. This function incorporates updated soil organic carbon potential and soil texture data extracted from the ISRIC SoilGrids v2 dataset. The projections are expressed in the same units as the Water Holding Capacity estimates. This approach facilitates the conversion of soil organic carbon predictions into Water Holding Capacity estimates, primarily aimed at enhancing future projections.
Benchmarking	Benchmarks for water-holding capacity (WHC) are based on predicted soil texture (sand and clay fractions) from the SoilGrids v2 dataset. Using a pedotransfer function (Saxton & Rawls, 2006), WHC is estimated across a range of possible soil organic carbon concentrations. From the resulting distribution, the low benchmark is set at the minimum WHC value, the high benchmark at the maximum, and the middle benchmark at the median WHC value for the soil type predicted on the plot.