Geotechnologies applied in digital soil mapping

Abstract

Geotechnologies applied in digital soil mappingThe civilisation lives in a world of maps and soil maps are vital at regional and farm levels to achieve best management agricultural practices. Soil is the substrate for plant growth and vital to the fulfilment of the food demand. However, the cartographic scale of those soil maps, which for the best management agricultural practice (BMAP) have to be the most detailed as possible and they are scarce. The Digital Soil Mapping (DSM) became the easiest and feasible approach to achieve such demand. Despite previous studies have tried to better characterise soil depths, there is space for improvements on its dynamics and mapping. Looking at this goal, Remote Sensing (RS) technologies have proven to be a great power on this task. Nevertheless, some aspects of that approach still need to be tested using another hybrid, stochastic, and deterministic models for the predictions of magnetic susceptibility (MS) and soil attributes at surface and subsurface. Therefore, chapter 1 presents the evaluation of nine machine learning algorithms (MLAs) to predict the free iron content at the soil surface (e.g. 0 -20 cm) using the DSM framework. Based on the best performance of those nine MLAs, we selected five MLAs. Chapter 2 shows the use of those five MLAs with usual and new environmental variables (e.g. DEM, drainage network, and soil spectroscopy) to predict the MS and soil attributes up to 100 cm depth. Attempts on quantifying soil mineral consist of having an observation measured using traditional laboratory soil analysis. However, developments in interpreting and analysing the visible and near-infrared (VNIR) diffuse reflectance have allowed quantifying some soil minerals. In chapter 3, it implements a novel framework using VNIR spectroscopy to quantify the main soil minerals and evaluates the application of digital soil mapping framework to spatialise those soil minerals. Last but not least, the chapter 4 presents the novelty of using all predict soil components as predictors of the soil mapping units in the region of Piracicaba-SP at farm scale (1:20,000), generating the first detailed digital soil map of the region. Additionally in this chapter, it was created the digital yield environmental map for sugarcane production. Thus, this thesis presents a new integrative framework to achieve detail soil maps for the BMAP and serves as a guide for future soil surveys across the world.