Soil information systems

Abstract

The history of the introduction of automated information systems and geographic information systems in soil survey, from the automation of map production to the quantitative modelling of soil and land resources, is reviewed. The methods used for collecting data from soil profiles and about the spatial distribution of soil are described. The use of optimal interpolation methods in soil survey is reviewed, including extensions such as co-kriging and disjunctive kriging. The general principles of a range of applications of geographical soil information systems are discussed and illustrated by examples. -from Author