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The Africa Topographic Moisture Potential layer classifies the landscape of Africa as either upland or lowland (and other depressions) area. It was produced as part of the USGS’s Africa Ecosystems Mapping project to create maps depicting standardized, terrestrial ecosystem models. Substrate moisture regimes strongly influence the differentiation and distribution of terrestrial ecosystems, and therefore topographic moisture potential is one of the key input layers in this biophysical stratification.
The Africa Topographic Potisiont layer classifies the African landscape (including Madagascar, Comoros Islands, and other coastal Islands near continenal Africa) into uplands and lowlands/depressions at a 100m resolution. Published by the USGS in 2009, this dataset was created for the Africa Terrestrial Ecosystems mapping project. The classification is derived from the Compound Topographic Index (CTI) , which integrates slope (from SRTM elevation data) and flow accumulation (from HydroSHEDS data) to model potential water flow.
Agricultural drought events can affect large regions across the world. Soil moisture (or soil water content) is an important variable for plant growth, and - together with precipitation and evapotranspiration - is a basic component of the hydrological cycle. The Soil Moisture Anomaly (SMA) indicator is used to detect and monitor agricultural drought, that is when there is reduced crop production due to insufficient soil moisture. It is computed as a deviation from the climatological reference period, and is updated 3 times a month (after the 10th, the 20th and the last day of the month). This layer displays the map for the last full decade of the current month. Negative anomalies (shades of brown) represent dry conditions.