This layer considers the nature and thickness of soils, subsoils, unsaturated zone confinement. The lowest values correspond to areas of karst aquifer with no overlying subsoil and the water table is at or near the surface. The highest values are for non karst rocks overlain by thick impermeable subsoils with a deep water table. The biggest influencing factor here was the presence and thickness of clay subsoil
Data sources included GSI National Vulnerability Map (National DTB map and National subsoil permeability map), FIPS-IFS Teagasc Subsoil Map,GSI National Aquifer Map and Rockingham depth to water table map. This was divided into two lithologies; the thickness and lithology of the subsoil and the thickness and lithology of the unsaturated bedrock aquifer and values were calculated for each layer. It was created using ERSI ArcMap 10.5 and QGIS as a shapefile and converted into .tiff format