Summary & Purpose
Soil depth is critical to ecosystem productivity, acting as a reservoir for water, nutrients, and carbon. Deeper soils enhance water holding capacity to withstand droughts in native and agricultural systems, and provide more volume for long-term carbon sequestration, directly influencing soil health and climate regulation. This dataset scraped public well log (AKA well driller’s report) data from the Idaho Department of Water Resources (IDWR) to create a soil depth map across the Magic Valley in south-central Idaho, USA. Soils in this region are predominantly loess-derived silt-loams, underlain by undulating beds of basalt on top of deep rhyolite. Starting in the early 1900s, the area has been intensively irrigated and transformed into a hub of large-scale crop and dairy production. The greater Magic Valley region includes > 37,000 households, with ~28% or 10,500 households in rural areas. The IDWR hosts well logs for every groundwater well in Idaho. The well logs contain lithologic data including soil depth (i.e., the soil-bedrock interface). We manually extracted soil depths from ~8,000 well sites within the intensive agricultural area in Magic Valley. The boundaries of the study area included the Snake River Canyon as the northern watershed boundary, the High Line Canal as the southern boundary, the Salmon Falls Creek Canyon as the western boundary, and the HUC 12 subwatersheds near Kimberly as the eastern boundary. The study area is 931 km2. Well installations and logs ranged from 1939 to 2024, and varied in the descriptive rigor of the soil depth. Soil depth data was manually flagged as low, medium, and high confidence in the accuracy of the soil depth estimate, leaving a dataset of ~5,700 high quality soil depths. A usable soil depth map of the study region was generated using a standard kriging interpolation method with a gaussian semivariogram model. Edge effects were minimized by including a 1.5 km buffer around the area of interest. Soil depths ranged from < 0.6 m (2 ft) to > 8.9 m (29.5 ft). Ultimately, well logs provided a usable and high quality public data source for mapping soil depth in a dryland region. Soil depth (i.e., control volume) limits landscape-scale water, nutrient, and carbon storage and losses, and may be an important factor when predicting system productivity and variability with change in climate and/or land use.
Date of Publication or Submission
3-10-2026
DOI
https://doi.org/10.18122/geo_data.10.boisestate
Funding Citation
This data and geospatial product is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Critical Zone Collaborative Network, Dryland Thematic Cluster, Grant Award #2012475. This research was performed in collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, Northwest Irrigation and Soils Research Lab in Kimberly, Idaho, as well as the Boise Center Aerospace Laboratory (BCAL) at Boise State University.
Data Source Credits
Idaho Department of Water Resources (IDWR), 2024, Wells and Groundwater Management, Retrieved from https://idwr.idaho.gov/wells/find-a-well-map/
Single Dataset or Series?
Series
Data Format
*.txt; *.csv; *.pdf; *.kmz; *.tfw; *.tif; *.aux; *.shp
File Size
13.8 MB
Data Attributes
See README_SOILDEPTH.txt
Time Period
1939-2024
Privacy and Confidentiality Statement
Boise State is explicitly compliant with federal and state laws surrounding data privacy including the protection of personal financial information through the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, personal medical information through HIPAA, HITECH and other regulations. All human subject data (e.g., surveys) has been collected and managed only by personnel with adequate human subject protection certification.
Use Restrictions
Users are free to share, copy, distribute and use the dataset; to create or produce works from the dataset; to adapt, modify, transform and build upon the dataset as long as the user attributes any public use of the dataset, or works produced from the dataset, referencing the author(s) and DOI link. For any use or redistribution of the dataset, or works produced from it, the user must make clear to others the license of the dataset and keep intact any notices on the original dataset.
Disclaimer of Warranty
BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE SUITABILITY OF THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN OR PROVIDED AS PART OF THE SYSTEM FOR ANY PURPOSE. ALL SUCH INFORMATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY HEREBY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS WITH REGARD TO THIS INFORMATION, INCLUDING ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS OF MERCHANTABILITY, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF INFORMATION AVAILABLE FROM THE SYSTEM.
THE INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE SYSTEM COULD INCLUDE TECHNICAL INACCURACIES OR TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. CHANGES ARE PERIODICALLY ADDED TO THE INFORMATION HEREIN. COMPANY AND/OR ITS RESPECTIVE SUPPLIERS MAY MAKE IMPROVEMENTS AND/OR CHANGES IN THE PRODUCT(S) AND/OR THE PROGRAM(S) DESCRIBED HEREIN AT ANY TIME, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU.
BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY DOES NOT MAKE ANY ASSURANCES WITH REGARD TO THE ACCURACY OF THE RESULTS OR OUTPUT THAT DERIVES FROM USE OF THE SYSTEM.
Recommended Citation
Byrne, Akira; Huber, David P.; Thompson, Dylan; Enterkine, Josh; and Pierce, Jennifer, "Dataset for Geospatial Interpolation of Soil Profile Depth in the Magic Valley, Idaho, USA: Use of Publicly Available Well Report Data" (2026). Geosciences Research Data. 10.
https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/geo_data/10
Comments
Dataset Contributors
Lixin Jin Earth: Environmental and Resource Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso, ljin2@utep.edu
Dave Bjorneberg: US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service Northwest Irrigation and Soils Research Laboratory, Dave.bjorneberg@usda.gov
Jisong Ryu: University of Pennsylvania, jisongleeryu@gmail.com
Gabrielle Killingstad: Boise State University, gabriellekilling@u.boisestate.edu
Robert Welle: Boise State University, robertwelle@u.boisestate.edu
Scott Robbins: Boise State University, scottrobbins@u.boisestate.edu