Is pedology dead and buried?

Pedology, the field study of soils as natural landscape bodies, has suffered serious cutbacks in stang and funding in many developed countries. Soil survey, a strong focus for pedology, has been most affected by this recession. The cutbacks to pedology reflect the reduction in funding for general purpose soil resource inventories and a decline in central government planning and land development, as well as changing needs for soil information and perceived failure of soil survey to respond by delivering relevant, timely information at affordable cost. A refocusing of research effort in pedology is required to contribute to research into environmental issues of sustainable land management, and global change processes and impacts. The adoption of modern, ecient approaches to collecting, analysing, interpreting and presenting field soil data will improve the fund-raising capability of pedology and enhance its institutional stature. The general purpose paper soil map and soil survey report has largely been superseded as a medium for presenting soil information. Increasingly, it will be replaced by computer-generated, special purpose, interpretive soil maps that are based on soil–landscape models and include more objective, statistically estimated information on soil variability. There is a continuing role for pedology to define the extent, distribution, properties, suitability, and vulnerability of soils as a basis for sustainable land management. There is a need for increasing focus on temporal changes in soil properties, greater attention to soil properties that determine soil functioning and influence soil use, and interpretation of the environmental record contained in soils and regolith.

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The Soil Information System of Rwanda: A Useful Tool to Identify Guidelines Towards Sustainable Land Management

Afrika Focus ◽

10.1163/2031356x-0190102004 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 19 (1-2) ◽

pp. 69-92 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ann Verdoodt ◽

Eric Van Ranst

Keyword(s):

Information System ◽

Land Management ◽

Agricultural Research ◽

Soil Survey ◽

Land Evaluation ◽

Climatic Data ◽

Land Resources ◽

Production Environment ◽

Sustainable Land Management ◽

Soil Information

The soil information system of Rwanda: a useful tool to identify guidelines towards sustainable land management. On the steep lands of Rwanda, overpopulation and degradation of the land resources are acute problems, especially against the background of present and future populations, food and agricultural demands, and opportunities and constraints. The ability of the land to produce is limited with the limits to production being set by climate, soil and landform conditions, and the use and management applied. Knowledge of the soils, their properties and their spatial distribution, is indispensable for the agricultural development of Rwanda as it opens opportunities for a more rational management of the land resources. The necessary input data for this agricultural research mainly became available through the realization and updating of a soil information system. Geographic information science and relational database software were combined to capture the spatial as well as the numerical and descriptive data gathered during the national, traditional soil survey that was finalized in 1989. The database was further extended with topographic and climatic data and has been used to characterise the physical production environment that farmers face in the different agricultural regions of the country. Several land evaluation tools, adapted to the Rwandan environment, have subsequently been developed, evaluating the options for stronger crop regionalisation, the strategies for more rational regional land use planning, and the possibilities for further intensification of the crop production.

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Quantitative soil - landscape models for the Haldon and Hurunui soil sets, New Zealand

Soil Research ◽

10.1071/sr04074 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 43 (2) ◽

pp. 127 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Jochen Schmidt ◽

Phil Tonkin ◽

Allan Hewitt

Keyword(s):

New Zealand ◽

Soil Properties ◽

Soil Survey ◽

Fuzzy Classification ◽

Aerial Photographs ◽

Soil Profiles ◽

Land Resource ◽

Landscape Models ◽

Soil Landscape ◽

Landscape Units

Limited resources and large areas of steeplands with limited field access forced soil and land resource surveyors in New Zealand often to develop generalised models of soil–landscape relationships and to use these to produce soil maps by manual interpretation of aerial photographs and field survey. This method is subjective and non-reproducible. Recent studies showed the utility of digital information and analysis to complement manual soil survey. The study presents quantitative soil–landscape models for the Hurunui and Haldon soil sets (New Zealand), developed from conceptual soil–landscape models. Spatial modelling techniques, including terrain analysis and fuzzy classification, are applied to compute membership maps of landform components for the study areas. The membership maps can be used to derive a ‘hard’ classification of land components and uncertainty maps. A soil taxonomic model is developed based on field data (soil profiles), which attaches dominant soil profiles and soil properties, including their uncertainties, to the defined land components. The method presented in this study is proposed as a potential technique for modelling land components of steepland areas in New Zealand, in which the spatial soil variation is dominantly controlled by landform properties. A soil map was developed that includes the uncertainty in the fundamental definitions of landscape units and the variability of soil properties within landscape units.

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Effects of sustainable land management interventions on selected soil properties in Geda watershed, central highlands of Ethiopia

Ecological Processes ◽

10.1186/s13717-020-0216-2 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Hailu Terefe ◽

Mekuria Argaw ◽

Lulseged Tamene ◽

Kindu Mekonnen ◽

John Recha ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Soil Properties ◽

Land Management ◽

Sustainable Land Management ◽

Management Interventions ◽

Central Highlands

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Land Evaluation, Sustainable Land Management and Impacts of Climate Change in Agriculture; Ethiopia: Review

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS ◽

10.47191/ijmra/v4-i6-04 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 04 (06) ◽

Author(s):

Yohannes Habteyesus Yitagesu ◽

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Food Security ◽

Water Resources ◽

Land Management ◽

Soil Degradation ◽

Land Development ◽

Land Evaluation ◽

Population Pressure ◽

Sustainable Land Management

Sustainable land management has emerged as an issue of major global concern. In many countries particularly in Ethiopia, the concern of suitable land management is because of the increasing population pressure on limited land resources, demanding for increased food production, the degradation of land and water resources accelerating rapidly. If the lands well suited for agriculture, it will follows further increases in production to meet the food demands of increasing populations, must come about by the more intensive use of existing agricultural lands. Climate & soil conditions, land use type and management, determine the production limit.To contest cited venomous effects of intensification, regard to environmental effects requires the development and implementation of technologies and policies, which will result in sustainable land management (Gisla-dottir and Stocking, 2005; Campbell and Hagmann, 2003). The major factors reason for low productivity include dependence on traditional farming techniques, soil degradation caused by overgrazing and deforestation, poor corresponding services such as extension, credit, marketing, infrastructure, and climatic factors such as drought and flood (Deressa, Hassan, & Ringler, 2011). In addition to the low soil fertility, soil degradation in Ethiopia; reduces soil productivity which results to food insecurity, economic losses and aggravates the recurrent droughts (Shiferaw & Holden, 1999; Mitiku et al., 2006). It has also increases vulnerability of people to the adverse effects of climate variability and change, by reducing soil organic carbon level and water holding capacity, which in turn decreases agricultural productivity and local resource assets (TerrAfrica, 2009; Nyssen et. al., 2003a; Hurni, 2000; Mitiku Haile,2006 & Daniel et al., 2015). Climate change causes wide-ranging effects on the environment, socioeconomic and associated sectors: water resources, agriculture and food security, human health, terrestrial ecosystems, and biodiversity (Belay Zerga & Getaneh Gebeyehu, 2016). Ethiopia is extremely vulnerable to climate related disasters including drought, heavy rains, floods, frost and heat waves which leads to a negative impacts on agriculture, food security, rural livelihoods, and economic development (NMA 2007). Planning of changes in land use requires a inclusive knowledge of the natural resources; a trustworthy estimate of what they are capable of producing, so that reliable predictions and recommendations can be made. Production potential, the conservation of soil and water resources for use by future generations requires consideration in planning land development. For these reasons sustainable land management is now getting considerable attention from development experts, policy makers and researchers. In long-term period, any utilization over its capability of the land will cause degradation and yield reduction. Therefore, to know the land production capacity and to allocate the land to the satisfactory and to the most profitable should be cared.

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Mapping Soil Properties to Advance the State of Spatial Soil Information for Greater Food Security on US Tribal Lands

Frontiers in Soil Science ◽

10.3389/fsoil.2021.695386 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 1 ◽

Author(s):

Bryan Fuentes ◽

Amanda J. Ashworth ◽

Mercy Ngunjiri ◽

Phillip Owens

Keyword(s):

Food Security ◽

High Resolution ◽

Soil Properties ◽

Cation Exchange ◽

Cation Exchange Capacity ◽

Soil Property ◽

Exchange Capacity ◽

Soil Survey ◽

Soil Information ◽

Tribal Lands

Knowledge, data, and understanding of soils is key for advancing agriculture and society. There is currently a critical need for sustainable soil management tools for enhanced food security on Native American Tribal Lands. Tribal Reservations have basic soil information and limited access to conservation programs provided to other U.S producers. The objective of this study was to create first ever high-resolution digital soil property maps of Quapaw Tribal Lands with limited data for sustainable soil resource management. We used a digital soil mapping (DSM) approach based on fuzzy logic to model the spatial distribution of 24 soil properties at 0–15 and 15–30 cm depths. A digital elevation model with 3 m resolution was used to derive terrain variables and a total of 28 samples were collected at 0–30 cm over the 22,880-ha reservation. Additionally, soil property maps were derived from Gridded Soil Survey Geographic Database (gSSURGO) for comparison. When comparing properties modeled by DSM to those derived from gSSURGO, DSM resulted in lower root mean squared error (RMSE) for percent clay and sand at 0–15 cm, and cation exchange capacity, percent clay, and pH at 15–30 cm. Conversely, gSSURGO-derived maps resulted in lower RMSE for cation exchange capacity, pH, and percent silt at the 0–15 cm depth, and percent sand and silt at the 15–30 cm depth. Although, some of the soil properties derived from gSSURGO had lower RMSE, spatial soil property patterns modeled by DSM were in better agreement with the topographic complexity and expected soil-landscape relationships. The proposed DSM approach developed property maps at high-resolution, which sets the baseline for production of new spatial soil information for Quapaw Tribal soils. It is expected that these maps and future versions will be useful for soil, crop, and land-use decisions at the farm and Tribal-level for increased agricultural productivity and economic development. Overall, this study provides a framework for developing DSM on Tribal Lands for improving the accuracy and detail of soil property maps (relative to off the shelf products such as SSURGO) that better represents soil-forming environments and the spatial variability of soil properties on Tribal Lands.

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