Flexible Soil Model Maps Remote Areas
…from Innovations Report…
“Soil scientists often face the dilemma of wishing to study soil in remote areas because they are ideal places to study soil formation and distribution under natural conditions, but mapping them requires a huge investment of time and resources. Computer-based models offer an efficient alternative. Researchers used ArcGIS geodatabase software to develop the Remote Area Soil Proxy (RASP) modeling technique to predict natural occurrence of soils in remote areas.
“Bruce Frazier and Richard Rupp of Washington State University and Toby Rodgers and Crystal Briggs of Soil Survey conducted this work in the Pasayten River watershed in north-central Washington. Their results are reported in the summer issue of Soil Survey Horizons. Data were collected from dominant landscape facets accessible by or near trails, and soil formation was modeled using surrogates for the soil forming factors.”
This piece of modelling tool sounds very promising and even someone like us can appreciate its importance.
I remember when I was doing my MSc project I was very keen to locate certain soil attributes from remote inland areas as well as from the Caribbean region. Unfortunately, I often could not found any decent dataset due to the locality of the regions. Perhaps this sort of tool could have helped me out to continue my project instead of abandoning it and take a much more boring one aboard.
Anyway, everyone to say a big WELCOME to RASP!!! It really desrves it!