2.2. Data used
In this study, freely available geospatial datasets were utilized for the nationwide annual soil erosion estimation and mapping for 2005 and 2015 in Pakistan at 1 km spatial resolution. Mean monthly rainfall/precipitation (mm) data at 1 km spatial resolution was obtained from the Chelsa-climate web portal (http://chelsa-climate.org) for 2005 and 2015 (Karger et al. , 2016). The twelve months raster rainfall/precipitation layers were averaged to calculate the mean annual rainfall/precipitation (mm) for the 2005 and 2015. The global scale 1 km soil map was downloaded from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) harmonized World Soil Database v 1.2 website (http://www.fao.org/land-water/databases-and-software/hwsd/en/) (Fischer et al. , 2008). One arc second (~30 m spatial resolution) Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) (Farr et al. , 2007) was downloaded from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Explorer web portal (https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/). The 30 m spatial resolution DEM was resampled at 1 km grid size, and then further processed to generate slope dataset. Annual Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) LCLU datasets (500 m spatial resolution) of 2005 and 2015 were downloaded from the USGS Earth Explorer data web portal (https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/), which were further resampled at 1 km spatial resolution. For data processing, visualization, and area estimations we used World Geodetic System 1984, Lambert Conformal Conic (LCC) projection system. All the geospatial datasets were truncated at the extent of Pakistan.