After much persistence, I am proud to announce that Nick Patton and team (Sarah Godsey, Ben Crosby, and Kathleen Lohse at ISU and Mark Seyfried from USDA ARS) published our article in Nature Communications on prediction soil thickness. see headline
https://www.isu.edu/headlines/2018-fall/how-thick-is-the-skin-of-the-earth-idaho-state-university-researchers-discover-a-simple-empirical-model-to-predict-soil-thickness.php
https://www.isu.edu/headlines/2018-fall/how-thick-is-the-skin-of-the-earth-idaho-state-university-researchers-discover-a-simple-empirical-model-to-predict-soil-thickness.php