Towards a data quality management framework for digital soil mapping with limited data

Abstract

The re-use of legacy soil data together with increasing numbers of environmental co-variables becomes increasingly more interesting in digital soil mapping at intermediate scales, in areas with limited data. This poses important issues regarding the reliability of these data as well as of the final product of mapping. It also requires that the data and the manner in which they are (re-)used do not have a negative influence on the quality of the mapping product. Existing quality management approaches in soil mapping emphasise the producer perspective. In addition, rather than being preventive in nature they mainly rely on detection of defects in end-product testing. A shift is required from a focus on the quality of the end-product of mapping to quality control of the mapping process itself. The development of a framework for soil data quality management is proposed in this chapter. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.