An expert system to predict intricate saline - sodic subsoil patterns in upland South Australia

Soil Research ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 602 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Thomas ◽  
R. W. Fitzpatrick ◽  
G. S. Heinson

Digital soil mapping (DSM) offers apparent benefits over more labour-intensive and costly traditional soil survey. Large cartographic scale (e.g. 1 : 10 000 scale) soil maps are rare in Australia, especially in agricultural areas where they are needed to support detailed land evaluation and targeted land management decisions. We describe a DSM expert system using environmental correlation that applies a priori knowledge from a key area (128 ha) soil–landscape with a regionally repeating toposequence to predict the distribution of saline–sodic subsoil patterns in the surrounding upland farming region (2275 ha) in South Australia. Our predictive framework comprises interrelated and iterative steps, including: (i) consolidating a priori knowledge of the key area soil–landscape; (ii) refining existing mentally held and graphic soil–landscape models; (iii) selecting suitable environmental covariates compatible with geographic information systems (GIS) by interrogation via 3D visualisation using a GIS; (iv) transforming the existing soil–landscape models to a computer model; (v) applying the computer model to the environmental variables using the expert system; (vi) performing the predictive mapping; and (vii) validation. The environmental covariates selected include: digital terrain attributes of slope gradient, topographic wetness index and plan curvature, and airborne gamma-radiometric K%. We apply selected soil profile physiochemical data from a prior soil survey to validate mapping. Results showed that we correctly predicted the saline–sodic subsoils in 10 of 11 reference profiles in the region.


Author(s):  
Robert Audi

This book provides an overall theory of perception and an account of knowledge and justification concerning the physical, the abstract, and the normative. It has the rigor appropriate for professionals but explains its main points using concrete examples. It accounts for two important aspects of perception on which philosophers have said too little: its relevance to a priori knowledge—traditionally conceived as independent of perception—and its role in human action. Overall, the book provides a full-scale account of perception, presents a theory of the a priori, and explains how perception guides action. It also clarifies the relation between action and practical reasoning; the notion of rational action; and the relation between propositional and practical knowledge. Part One develops a theory of perception as experiential, representational, and causally connected with its objects: as a discriminative response to those objects, embodying phenomenally distinctive elements; and as yielding rich information that underlies human knowledge. Part Two presents a theory of self-evidence and the a priori. The theory is perceptualist in explicating the apprehension of a priori truths by articulating its parallels to perception. The theory unifies empirical and a priori knowledge by clarifying their reliable connections with their objects—connections many have thought impossible for a priori knowledge as about the abstract. Part Three explores how perception guides action; the relation between knowing how and knowing that; the nature of reasons for action; the role of inference in determining action; and the overall conditions for rational action.



Author(s):  
Donald C. Williams

This chapter begins with a systematic presentation of the doctrine of actualism. According to actualism, all that exists is actual, determinate, and of one way of being. There are no possible objects, nor is there any indeterminacy in the world. In addition, there are no ways of being. It is proposed that actual entities stand in three fundamental relations: mereological, spatiotemporal, and resemblance relations. These relations govern the fundamental entities. Each fundamental entity stands in parthood relations, spatiotemporal relations, and resemblance relations to other entities. The resulting picture is one that represents the world as a four-dimensional manifold of actual ‘qualitied contents’—upon which all else supervenes. It is then explained how actualism accounts for classes, quantity, number, causation, laws, a priori knowledge, necessity, and induction.



Author(s):  
Keith DeRose

In this chapter the contextualist Moorean account of how we know by ordinary standards that we are not brains in vats (BIVs) utilized in Chapter 1 is developed and defended, and the picture of knowledge and justification that emerges is explained. The account (a) is based on a double-safety picture of knowledge; (b) has it that our knowledge that we’re not BIVs is in an important way a priori; and (c) is knowledge that is easily obtained, without any need for fancy philosophical arguments to the effect that we’re not BIVs; and the account is one that (d) utilizes a conservative approach to epistemic justification. Special attention is devoted to defending the claim that we have a priori knowledge of the deeply contingent fact that we’re not BIVs, and to distinguishing this a prioritist account of this knowledge from the kind of “dogmatist” account prominently championed by James Pryor.



Author(s):  
Shohei Tada ◽  
Syoji Kobashi ◽  
Kei Kuramoto ◽  
Fumiaki Imamura ◽  
Takatoshi Morooka ◽  
...  


1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (22) ◽  
pp. 1930-1931 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Anguita ◽  
S. Rovetta ◽  
S. Ridella ◽  
R. Zunino




Author(s):  
Yusuke Nakajima ◽  
Syoji Kobashi ◽  
Yohei Tsumori ◽  
Nao Shibanuma ◽  
Fumiaki Imamura ◽  
...  




2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Recknagel ◽  
H. Rothe


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