There is no standard methodology which allows the incorporation of geological information into digital soil mapping (DSM) despite the great potential of geology as environmental covariate in DSM. To fill this gap, in this study, a geochemical parent material classification scheme was tested on the watershed area of Lake Balaton, for which soil maps at a finer scale have not yet been created. A parent material map was prepared on the basis of a 1:100 000 surface geology map in order to make the incorporation of soil modelling and mapping possible. Legacy data of 12400 soil sample points was used in order to examine the role of geology in the quantitative distribution of some soil properties and element content (liquid limit, soil organic carbon, pH (KCL) , CaCO 3 , Mg, Cu, Zn, Mn). Results confirm that the SiO 2 content of the parent material influences the properties of the derived soils. In the second part of the study Random Forest models were developed for three major soil properties (liquid limit, soil organic carbon, pH) with the use of additional environmental covariates: elevation, slope, aspect, curvature, topographic position index (TPI), annual average temperature, annual average precipitation, remote sensing based normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and land cover information. The performance and accuracy of the models were evaluated on the basis of the coefficient of determination (R 2) and root mean square error (RMSE), calculated on a randomly selected validation dataset (20% of the database). The models performed with R 2 values of 0.72, 0.6 and 0.68 for liquid limit, soil organic carbon and pH respectively. The importance of variables was also examined in the RF models, and this demonstrated that while geology is among the best-performing predictors, in neither case is it the most important variable. Ninety metre resolution maps of the three major soil properties were compiled by making spatial predictions with the RF models developed here. For validation of the maps, an independent soil database was used, which showed that the prediction performed well on the cultivated area where the concordance correlation coefficients (CCC) were 0.73, 0.73 and 0.69 for liquid limit, pH and soil organic carbon respectively.
Background Despite of the importance of soils in agronomy, to date no comprehensive assessment of cropping in Europe has been performed from the viewpoint of the soil variability and its relationship to cropping patterns. In order to fill this knowledge gap, we studied the cropping patterns in different soils of European climate zones with regards to the shares of their crop types in a comparative manner. The study highlights the main features of farming by soil in Europe. Farming by soil in this context means the consideration of soil characteristics when selecting crop types and cropping patterns. Methods We first assessed the dissimilarity between the cropping compositions of different pedoclimatic zones in Europe. Next, we assessed the differences of crop distribution in the climate zones by soil types and main crop types by analyzing the degree of association of crops to soil types. A detailed country scale assessment was performed using crops-specific soil productivity maps and land use survey data from Hungary. Results Results suggest that, in general, farmers consciously take pedoclimatic condition of farming into account when selecting their cropping patterns. In other words, farming by soil is a common practice in the different climatic regions of Europe. However, we have strong reasons to believe that soil suitability-based cropping is not practiced to its full potential over the continent. For example, the findings of our European assessment suggest that production areas of legumes are not always optimized for the local pedoclimatic conditions in some zones. These findings also underline that economic drivers are decisive, when farmers adopt their cropping (eg. oil crops on Albeluvsiols in Europe). Win-win situations of economic considerations and soil suitability based management are observed in all pedoclimatic zones of Europe. The country analysis shows that cropping is progressively practiced on more suitable areas, depending also the crop tolerance to variable pedoclimatic conditions In conclusion, we can assume that pedoclimatic conditions of cropping are respected in most of Europe and farmers crops according to edaphic conditions whenever economic considerations do not override the ecological concerns of farming.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.