NCSU GIS/MEA582:
Geospatial Modeling and Analysis

K factor for erosion modeling

K factor is soil erodibility and depends on soil type. K factor can be obtained from SSURGO database. Data can be downloaded from Web Soil Survey. The downloaded zip file contains (beside other data) a Shapefile with soil polygons. The K factor can be obtained from an attribute table downloadable from a list of GIS data provided by USGS, search for Area- and Depth-Weighted Averages of Selected SSURGO Variables for the Conterminous United States and District of Columbia, specifically Layer.dbf. This table can be joined using key MUKEY.