GEOREFERENCED SOIL DATABASE FOR EUROPE Manual of procedures Version 1 Edited by European Soil Bureau Scientific Committee GEOREFERENCED SOIL DATABASE FOR EUROPE Manual of procedures Version 1 Edited by European Soil Bureau Scientific Committee Authors P. Finke R. Hartwich R. Dudal J. Ibàñez M. Jamagne D. King L. Montanarella N. Yassoglou CONTENTS 1 PREFACE .....................................................................................................................................10 1.1 READERS' GUIDE................................................................................................................11 2 BACKGROUND...........................................................................................................................12 3 OBJECTIVES...............................................................................................................................14 4 GENERAL CONCEPTS..............................................................................................................16 4.1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................16 4.2 SOIL BODY AND SOIL HORIZON.....................................................................................16 4.2.1 Criteria for determining a soil body ...................................................................................17 4.2.2 Spatial organization of horizons within a soil body ...........................................................18 4.3 SOILSCAPE...........................................................................................................................18 4.3.1 Criteria for determining a soilscape...................................................................................18 4.3.2 Spatial organization of soil bodies within soilscapes .........................................................19 4.4 SOIL REGION AND REFERENCE AREA ..........................................................................20 4.4.1 Small-scale: the soil region ................................................................................................20 4.4.2 Large-scale: reference areas..............................................................................................20 4.5 GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE DATABASE.................................................................21 4.6 RELATIONS TO OTHER SYSTEMS AND DATABASES.................................................22 4.6.1 Relations to other soil classification and mapping systems................................................22 4.6.2 Structure of the data ...........................................................................................................23 4.6.3 Nature of variables .............................................................................................................23 5 SOIL REGIONS OF EUROPE ...................................................................................................25 5.1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................25 5.2 DOMINANT SOIL TYPES....................................................................................................26 5.3 CHARACTERISTIC ASSOCIATIONS OF PARENT MATERIAL.....................................26 5.4 CLIMATIC AREAS OF EUROPE ........................................................................................27 5.5 ALTITUDES AND MAJOR LANDFORMS.........................................................................31 5.6 LEGEND OF THE SOIL REGIONS MAP............................................................................32 6 IMPLEMENTATION AND DATA ACQUISITION ................................................................33 6.1 AVAILABLE DATA RESOURCES AT THE EUROPEAN SCALE...................................33 6.2 IMPLEMENTATION PROCEDURE ....................................................................................34 6.2.1 Soil regions.........................................................................................................................34 6.2.2 Pilot areas...........................................................................................................................34 6.3 WORK TO DO IN PILOT AREAS........................................................................................37 6.3.1 Development of metadatabase............................................................................................37 6.3.2 Work in areas with existing soil data..................................................................................37 6.3.3 Work in areas without existing soil data.............................................................................39 6.3.4 Filling the database ............................................................................................................40 6.3.5 Validation ...........................................................................................................................40 6.4 COORDINATION AND ACTORS .......................................................................................40 7 STRUCTURE OF THE DATABASE .........................................................................................42 7.1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................42 7.1.1 General structure................................................................................................................42 7.1.2 Conventions ........................................................................................................................42 7.2 TOPOLOGICAL DATASET .................................................................................................43 7.2.1 Horizon pattern table..........................................................................................................43 7.2.2 Soil body pattern table........................................................................................................44 7.2.3 Soil body relation table.......................................................................................................44 7.2.4 Soilscape limits table ..........................................................................................................46 7.3 SEMANTIC DATASET.........................................................................................................47 7.3.1 Soil body definition table ....................................................................................................47 7.3.2 Soil body tables...................................................................................................................48 7.3.3 Soil horizon tables ..............................................................................................................49 7.3.4 Soilscape description table .................................................................................................52 7.3.5 Soil region table..................................................................................................................53 7.4 GEOMETRIC DATASET......................................................................................................53 7.4.1 Soilscape geometry table ....................................................................................................53 7.4.2 Soil region geometry table..................................................................................................54 8 SAMPLING AND VALIDATION IN REFERENCE AREAS.................................................55 8.1 ESTIMATES OF VARIABILITY AND DIVERSITY ..........................................................55 8.1.1 Estimation of pedodiversity ................................................................................................55 8.1.2 Estimation of population parameters..................................................................................55 8.1.3 Estimation of the variogram ...............................................................................................56 8.2 DETERMINATION OF SAMPLE SIZES OF INDIVIDUAL PARAMETERS ...................57 8.2.1 Sequential sampling............................................................................................................57 8.2.2 Sample size estimation from the standard deviation...........................................................58 8.2.3 Sample size estimation using variograms ...........................................................................58 8.3 SOME NUMERICAL CLASSIFICATION TECHNIQUES .................................................59 8.3.1 Cluster analysis to obtain a representative profile.............................................................59 8.3.2 Nearest neighbour analysis to calculate simularities between sampling sites....................59 8.4 TESTING THE PREDICTIVE POWER OF A MAP ............................................................60 8.4.1 Map unit level: map purity..................................................................................................60 8.4.2 Parameter level: (logistic) regression with qualitative predictors .....................................60 9 APPLICATIONS OF A GEOREFERENCED SOIL DATABASE .........................................62 9.1 METHODS OF APPLICATION............................................................................................62 9.2 STORAGE OF APPLICATION RESULTS...........................................................................63