Is it correct that the soilthickness scaling factor is hardcoded?

[iacopoff]

HydroMT-Wflow version checks

• [X] I have checked that this issue has not already been reported.
• [X] I have checked that this bug exists on the latest version of HydroMT-Wflow.

Reproducible Example

In this line the soilthickness is converted from cm to mm, but I would expect this to be set in the data_catalog.yaml or am I missing some fundametal design choice?

https://github.com/Deltares/hydromt_wflow/blob/7ee62a113bcd5d9e73e33f2d18ee5d1ad09723f1/hydromt_wflow/workflows/soilgrids.py#L577

Current behaviour

hardcoded scaling of soilthickness

Desired behaviour

set scaling of soilthickness in the data_catalog.yaml

Additional context

No response

[hboisgon]

It is a design choice that the input should be soilthickness in cm. See the documentation of the function: https://deltares.github.io/hydromt_wflow/latest/_generated/hydromt_wflow.WflowModel.setup_soilmaps.html#hydromt_wflow.WflowModel.setup_soilmaps

The idea with HydroMT is that many models other than wflow may want to re-use the same data and convetions for their data catalog so we harmonise names and units at the HydroMT catalog level. This can mean that the HydroMT unit is different than a model specific unit. See also: https://deltares.github.io/hydromt/latest/user_guide/data_conventions.html

[hboisgon]

If you are happy with this anwer I will close this issue for now. Else feel free to re-open!

[iacopoff]

The soilgrid's soilthickness is in cm, but wflow requires mm, that's why you have that line where you multiply by 10, correct?. Similarly the soilgrid's bulk density is in cg/cm3, bu wflow requires g/cm3, that's why I am applying a scaling factor from the data_catalog.yaml:

soilgrids:
   data_type: RasterDataset
   path: /soilgrids/{variable}.tif
   driver: raster
   filesystem: local
   crs: 4326
   unit_mult: 
     bd_sl1: 0.01 # cg/cm3 ->  g/cm3
....

I was just curious about this difference, thanks @hboisgon for your explanation.

BTW I am talking about soilgrids 2020 or 2.0, https://www.isric.org/explore/soilgrids/faq-soilgrids