Towards a Guideline for Digital Soil Mapping in Ecuador

DFG PAK 825 - LI 2360/1

Von 12/2012 bis 01/2016

Projektleiter: Mareike Ließ
Mitarbeiter: Carlos M. Guio Blanco, Víctor M. Brito Gómez, Andres Felipe Alvarado Barros, Lourdes Natalia Muñoz Gómez

Research experience in digital soil mapping (DSM) shall be extended and deepened in two further research areas in order to develop a guideline for DSM in Ecuador. The guideline will give an overview: a) about the DSM approach, b) the different sampling designs developed according to the area size, accessibility and terrain complexity, c) the various methods from the field of supervised learning to develop digital soil maps, and d) the implementation with open source software. The soil-landscapes of the three investigation areas are analysed and soil-landscape models are developed by machine learning techniques, in order to spatially predict soil properties from point data based on environmental prediction parameters. By using the so developed digital soil maps as principal input, a functional soil-landscape analysis is carried out to determine landslide, erosion and anthropogenic disturbance risk zones as well as to estimate the soil organic carbon stocks and soil fertility.