Application of Digital Soil Mapping (DSM) to improve the spatial accuracy of national soils data and to quantify uncertainty.
DSM
Aims and Hypotheses
Grant CampbellThe James Hutton Institute, Macaulay Drive, Craigiebuckler, Aberdeen, AB15 8QH Email: [email protected]
ReferencesCarré, F., McBratney, A.B., Mayr, T., and Montanarella, L. (2007): "Digital soilassessments: Beyond DSM." Geoderma 142(1–2): pp.69-79.Hannam, J., Mayr, T., Zawadska, J., Corstanje, R., Hallett, S., Jones, B., Creamer, R.(2014). "Putting the soil back into digital soil mapping.“Holden, J. (2008): “An Introduction to Physical Geography and theEnvironment.”2nd Edition. Harlow: Prentice Hall.McBratney, A. B., Menonca Santos, M.L. and Minasny, B. (2003): "On digital soilmapping." Geoderma 117(1): pp.3-52.
Introduction
• Soils form a major part of our natural
environment and, alongside water and
air, are vital to our existence on Earth.
Soil is made up of organic and
inorganic matter along with water and
air and is variously organised and
subjected to dynamic interactions and
processes such as weathering
(Holden, 2008).
• Soil maps are often used as spatial
carriers of soil attribute information
for modellers and to map soil
functions. However, traditional soil
maps are not always available in
digital form or appropriate scales for
modelling and frequently do not
clearly identify levels of uncertainty
connected with map units or soil
attributes.
• Increased costs, as well as, field
surveying practicalities, have limited
the collection of high resolution soil
information.
• Digital Soil Mapping (DSM) has been
identified as a useful tool to help
generate this information, to provide
uncertainty estimates and to improve
the spatial resolution of national scale
soil maps. At present, digital soil maps
are being developed to illustrate key
properties and groups such as the
GlobalSoilMap.net consortium have
provided criteria that will enable a
global dataset of specified soil
properties to be produced. Future Work• A generation of a soil property map for England, Wales and Scotland (and
potentially Northern Ireland).• From this property map, test various simple soil function models such as yield and
soil for carbon sequestration.• Estimating the uncertainty and investigate how to communicate this effectively to
policy makers and the wider academic community. A systematic review of userneeds of soil information will have been undertaken earlier in the PhD process andfrom that, a critical evaluation will have been addressed.
DIGITAL SOIL MAPPING COMPONENT
HYPOTHESIS• Digital Soil Mapping (DSM) can improve
the resolution of spatial information onsoil properties and reduce the associateduncertainty.
AIM• To compare and contrast the DSM
approaches against traditional, non-statistical methods to determine whichof the two approaches is best atrepresenting information about the soil.
SOIL FUNCTIONING COMPONENT
HYPOTHESIS• DSM can improve the resolution of
spatial information on soil functions andreduce the associated uncertainty on anational scale.
AIM• To critically evaluate the predictions of
exemplar soil functions produced byusing information generated from DSM.
From Carre et al, (2007)
From Hannam et al, 2014)
• The computer-assisted production of digital maps of soil types and soil properties.
or• “the creation and population
of spatial soil information systems by numerical models…inferring the spatial and temporal variations of soil types and soil properties…from soil observation and knowledge and related environmental variables” (McBratney et al, 2003).
