A com-GIS based decision tree model inagricultural application

Abstract

The problem of agricultural soil pollution by heavy metals has been receiving an increasing attention in the last few decades. Geostatistics module in ArcGIS, could not however efficiently simulate the spatial distribution of heavy metals with satisfied accuracy when the spatial autocorrelation of the study area severely destroyed by human activities. In this study, the classification and regression tree (CART) has been integrated into ArcGIS using ArcObjects and Visual Basic for Application (VBA) to predict the spatial distribution of soil heavy metals contents in the area severely polluted. This is a great improvement comparing with ordinary Kriging method in ArcGIS. The integrated approach allows for relatively easy, fast, and cost-effective estimation of spatially distributed soil heavy metals pollution. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.