Home    About    Publications    Services    Contact   
   
    Keynote Papers     Contributed Papers     Author Index     Copyright and Citation     Conference Information  
Login Login
Logout Register
Print Friendly Print Friendly
  Home > Publications > SuperSoil 2004 > Development of a soil inference system for evaluating soil quality

Previous PageTable Of Contents

Development of a soil inference system for evaluating soil quality

Budiman Minasny and Alex B. McBratney

Faculty of Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.

Abstract

Soil quality is an essential issue in soil science research. It serves as a direct link between agricultural practices and sustainability. Soil quality is controlled by interactions of various physical, chemical and biological properties. In many soil science research projects, only certain aspects of the problem are covered, but when studying soil quality it is important to consider all physical, chemical and biological aspects. It is therefore important to be able to estimate various soil quality indicators. However, the most difficult step in the process of soil quality research is efficient data collection. Thus one of the challenges in developing soil quality indicators is the need for spatially dense data at reasonable cost. We address this problem by using a soil inference system. Given the measurements we know with a given level of certainty, we estimate the system soil quality indicators that we don’t know with minimal inaccuracy, by means of pedotransfer functions combinations. This paper will describe and demonstrate such a system. Using an example, we show that a simple system can be used to infer various soil physical and chemical quality indicators and their associated uncertainties, and how one soil property can be linked to others. Soil physical properties that can be inferred include soil hydraulic properties, thermal properties, mechanical properties, electrical properties, gas diffusion, and their interactions.

Previous PageTop Of Page

Refereed proceedings
Click here to access the proceedings.

Author evaluation
Help us to make the Author Gateway more user friendly for future conferences.
Fill in a short evaluation form.

Author permission
Authors who wish to permit their PPT presentations to be published as part of the proceedings are invited to
download the permission forum
Item one
Description
www.regional.org.au
Item two
Description
www.regional.org.au
Item three
Description
www.regional.org.au
ISBN 1 920842 26 8 SuperSoil 2004 Published by The Regional Institute Ltd