Terrain Evaluation by Means of a Data Bank

Beckett, P. H. T.; Webster, R.; McNeil, G. M.; Mitchell, C. W.

doi:10.2307/1795497

Cited by 12 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The whole may be regarded as a system in which the classification (i) consists of a set of files, one for each class, and the data from (ii) are the contents of the files. Beckett et al (1972) built just such a physical bank for engineering data on soil, and they demonstrated it in action for terrain evaluation.…”

Section: Geographic Information Systems (Gis)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil resources and their assessment

Webster

1997

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B

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The assessment of the soil resource of any region has two parts, namely, an inventory of the kinds of soil and their distribution, and knowledge of the way each kind can be used and its performance under a range of circumstances. Soil varies substantially and intricately over short distances in most parts of the world. Inventory by field survey and air-photo interpretation must be done at a local scale. Inventories may be combined so that an individual nation state or region of similar size can know what kinds of soil it has, how much and where they are, how much each can produce, how to manage each in perpetuity, and the risks of degradation in use. Local classifications, with classes defined simply and identifiably on aerial photographs, will serve for mapping, and in combination with classical statistics can provide sound estimates from stratified sampling and agronomic experimentation.Sound assessment should also be at this local scale initially. This should combine fundamental understanding of the soil's behaviour, strategic agronomic research on regional stations, and on-farm trials. The last are crucial for estimating productivity of the soil in practice.Data from all sources can be stored, sorted and displayed by geographic information systems that now have abundant capacity. They should be indexed by soil class and other attributes, with clear distinction being made between assessments of productive potential and basic data. They should be publicly accessible, to ensure that data are readily available and never lost.Estimates of the soil resource and its productivity for large regions, nation states, and the world can be compiled from local surveys by sampling through a ' bottom-up ' procedure.

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Section: Geographic Information Systems (Gis)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil resources and their assessment

Webster

1997

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B

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“…Terrain evaluation assesses land features such as topography, geology, soil quality, water availability, vegetation, and current land usage to determine its appropriateness for a specific activity (Beckett et al 1972). Land evaluation analyses the essential properties of the terrain and its ability to support specific land uses sustainably over extended periods (Bandyopadhyay et al 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural land suitability analysis in Manipur, India using GIS and AHP

Baite,

Bhattacharjee,

Debbarma

et al. 2024

Auc Geographica

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This article aims to identify potential sites for agricultural use in the state of Manipur of north east India by employing the analytic hierarchy process in a geographic information system environment in conjunction with the use of remote sensing and soil data. Within the analytic hierarchy process, each terrain variable underwent a pairwise comparison and criteria weights were assigned according to their relative importance. Eight variables were selected and used in land suitability analysis for agriculture. It was found that Manipur had 57% (12,660 km2) of its total geographical area suitable for agriculture. However, 8126 km2 (37%) and 1374 km2 (6%) of the total geographical area was currently and permanently unsuitable land respectively. The distribution of suitable land varied greatly, with highly, moderately and marginally suitable land covering only 8%, 16% and 33% respectively of the total geographical area. The highly suitable agricultural land is predominantly concentrated in the Imphal valley (70%), though 90% of moderately suitable and 96% of marginally suitable land also exist in the hills. The hilly areas constitute 96% and 97% respectively of currently unsuitable and permanently unsuitable land in the state. Suitable land comprises of land with low to medium altitude, gentle to moderate slopes, soil of fine or acceptable quality, and with minimal flood risk. Unsuitable lands tend to be diametrically opposite to these attributes with steep hill slopes. The nature of distribution of land suitability types influences the agricultural pattern in Manipur. Agriculture in the hill areas comprises mainly of shifting cultivation on hill slopes, whereas in the valley region it is irrigated and permanent. This analysis of Manipur has a wider applicability since the shifting cultivation-irrigated agriculture combination is similar to that which exists across much of the highlands of South East Asia.

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“…The analysis of soil variation presented in McBratney and Webster (1981) using techniques of data transformation, principal component analysis, and computation of the sample variogram required a personal computer and about 0.1 MB of computer storage. While quite unremarkable for the present-day soil scientist, the use of digital computer technologies in 1981 was already a long way from other tools such as punched cards, a pre-electronic digital data storing and handling tool widely used by soil scientists (e.g., by Beckett et al, 1972). A few years before the study of McBratney and Webster (1981), the punched cards were themselves an improvement in comparison with analog data such as aerial photographs used for soil and land evaluation by Buringh (1954) or Webster and Beckett (1970), among others.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital soil science and beyond

Wadoux

McBratney

2021

Soil Science Soc of Amer J

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Digital convergence is helping us to better understand and study the soil. Fixed and mobile sensors, and wireless communication systems aided by the internet produce cheap and abundant streams of digital soil data that can readily be used for modeling and information generation. Here, we explore the ways in which digital science and technology have affected soil science. We can call this digital soil science and define it as the study of the soil aided by the tools of the digital convergence. To some degree, all of our research and teaching had been enabled, enhanced, and expanded by the digital convergence. We outline how soil science has changed using illustrations of intellectual and technical developments enabled digitally. Digital soil sensors have been widely implemented, and new tools such as cell phones and applications, or metagenomics techniques are becoming available. There are also areas in soil science for which no major obstacles in the digital technologies exist, but which have not been thoroughly investigated-for example, to devise a truly digital soil field description or for building a formal digital quantitative system of soil classification. The soil science community will need to be alert to some of the dangers brought by digital convergence such as the lack of new theory and proprietary (black-box) soil prediction. Finally, we discuss a whole set of digital tools that will, or might, gain the stage in the immediate future and take a stab in the dark on what may lie over the horizon of digital soil science.

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Terrain Evaluation by Means of a Data Bank

Cited by 12 publications

References 13 publications

Soil resources and their assessment

Soil resources and their assessment

Agricultural land suitability analysis in Manipur, India using GIS and AHP

Digital soil science and beyond

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