High-resolution, multi-depth mapping of soil bulk density and pH in China's forests using machine learning

Abstract

Abstract. Precise monitoring of forest soil bulk density (BD) and pH is crucial for addressing global challenges like carbon sequestration and soil acidification. However, existing national soil maps, primarily derived from comprehensive ecosystem samples, inadequately represent the distinct characteristics and high spatial heterogeneity of China's vast and diverse forest ecosystems. To bridge this gap, we present high-resolution (90 m), forest-specific maps of soil BD and pH across China. Leveraging 4356 forest soil profiles collected through extensive field surveys and 41 environmental covariates within an optimized Quantile Regression Forests (QRF) framework incorporating forward recursive feature selection (FRFS), we generated wall-to-wall predictions for five standardized depth intervals (0–5, 5–15, 15–30, 30–60, 60–100 cm). Model performance, assessed through 10-fold cross-validation (CV) and independent validation (IV), achieved model efficiency coefficients (MEC) ranging from 0.78 to 0.89 (CV) and 0.60 to 0.66 (IV) for BD, and from 0.83 to 0.87 (CV) and 0.71 to 0.81 (IV) for pH, indicating the product's strong capability to capture the spatial variability of forest soil properties across China. The 90 m resolution BD and pH maps contribute to the GlobalSoilMap initiative and provide forest-specific inputs for regional Earth system and land surface models. These products advance the quantification of soil acidification processes and provide critical baseline data for estimating forest soil carbon stocks across China. The dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.57760/sciencedb.25375 (Chen and Huang, 2025).