The dependence of the per-component Gaussian shape dispersion, ${\sigma }_{ϵ}/\sqrt{2}$, (left panel) and the galaxy density, n_eff, (right panel) on the root-mean square of the background noise, σ_rms in the KiDS-1000 DR4 data. For both panels, the data points represent the mean σ_ϵ or n_eff of ten equi-populated bins in σ_rms with their boundaries in {1.70,  2.33,  2.57,  2.80,  3.04,  3.28,  3.52,  3.76,  4.00,  4.23,  12.96}. The solid line shows the linear fit to the aforementioned data points of their respective tomographic bin according to Eqs. (28) and (29). The parameters obtained from this fit are given in Table 1. The dotted horizontal lines show the mean values of σ_ϵ and n_eff calculated from the galaxy samples with variable depth per tomographic bin, while the dashed horizontal lines show the values of σ_ϵ and n_eff for the respective galaxy samples without any spatial variations in the observational depth. Both of these lines agree exceptionally well by construction, so that for some source bins there is not any observable difference between them.