Some learnings and open questions from the Montpellier DSM workshop

First DSM working group meeting University of Miskolc, Hungary, 7-8 April, 2005

P. Lagacherie

Laboratoire d’étude des interactions Sol – Agrosystème - Hydrosystème

TOPIC 2 PROGRESS, EXAMPLES AND ECONOMICS OF DIGITAL SOIL MAPPING

(12 papers)

TOPIC 3 SAMPLING METHODS FOR CREATING DIGITAL SOIL MAPS(4

papers) TOPIC 4 REPRESENTATION OF DIGITAL SOIL MAPS

(5 papers)

TOPIC 5 QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF DIGITAL SOIL MAPS (4 papers)

TOPIC 6 NEW ENVIRONMENTAL COVARIATES, & NEW SOURCES OF ENVIRONMENTAL COVARIATES, FOR DIGITAL SOIL MAPPING

(8 papers)

TOPIC 7 QUANTITATIVE MODELLING FOR PREDICTING SOIL CLASSES AND ATTRIBUTES

(23 papers)

TOPIC 1 INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND TO DIGITAL SOIL MAPPING (1 paper)

The Workshop topics

Outline

DSM: some generic comments

New environmental covariates and new sources of environmental covariates for DSM

Collecting soil data

Building DSM functions

Evaluating the quality of digital soil maps

Representation of Digital Soil Mapping outputs

DSM: some generic comments and questions

DSM is expected to work better than conventional surveys

DSM requires capital input and mixed skill teams

Which DSM outputs?

How to graft DSM on to existing soil database programs?

New environmental covariates and new sources of environmental covariates for DSM

Great variety of environmental covariates tested. DEM remains the most common

Need to express the mental models of pedogenesis to select the appropriate covariables

Preprocessings of covariates (classifications, decomposition of scale factors)

How to deal with newly available covariates in the future?

Collecting soil data for DSM

Only a few contributions to this topic

Sampling methods based on statistical and geostatistical techniques

Which criteria for a DSM sampling? How to deal with them?

From site sampling to area sampling: is this different ?

How to use existing soil data?

Building DSM functions

Topic 7 was the most populated

Mostly non-spatial approaches

Soil surveyor approaches vs pedometric ones

How to better associate soil surveyors and pedometrician?

How to deal with multiscale soil variations?

How to deal with variations in time?

Evaluating the quality of digital soil mapsA critical point

Need of an unified framework of quality assessment

How to validate area soil prediction?

How to validate quality according to each user application?

How to communicate quality to the users?

The quality information must be meaningful to users

Representation of Digital Soil Mapping outputs

The traditional 2D choropleth map is insufficient

Modern GIS and visualization tools can be used to valorize DSM to the users….

…and to assist us in building DSM functions

Which compromise between quantity of displayed information and complexity?

How far must we go?

Can visualisation tools and web be used to promoteDSM ?

To go further

From the research phase to actual production of soil maps and soil data

Need of a generic tool : Spatial Soil Inference System ?

Let’s organize us

Structure a research project

Select pilot areas that cover the various data configuration within Europe

Build a Version 0 of a Digital Soil Mapper

Create a common DSM toolbox with easy available functions

A Spatial Soil Inference System ( Lagacherie & McBratney, 2005)

DTMRS image

X

Existing Soil map

Scorpan layers

Soil observations

Spatial Soil Information System DSM Function library

Scorpan F.

Pedotransfer F

Class Content F.

Allocation F.

User interface

User data

Predictor

OUTPUT

Function organiser