A Compendium of On-Line Soil Survey Information
Land Evaluation
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A Compendium of On-Line Soil Survey InformationLand Evaluation |
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Land evaluation is the process of predicting land performance under specific uses. Soil survey plays a key role in land evaluation, because soil is one of the most important components of the land resource. However, the concept of "land" is much wider than that of "soil". Land evaluation must be an integrative, multi-disciplinary exercise.
FAO (Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)
A Land & Water Discussion Paper from 2007, describes the FAO's current thinking about land evaluation. As the series title says, it's open to discussion.
A nice introduction to land evaluation in context, with good case studies. This puts land evaluation in context; the techniques follow from the demands.
The original statement (1976) of the FAO's structured approach to land evaluation. Has been superseded by a better description of the system in Soils Bulletins 52 and 55 (see below).
The most complete example of how to apply the FAO's approach to a major class of land uses (1985). Detailed discussions of how to evaluate specific land qualities.
Soil conservation as an integrated part of land use strategy.
One approach to determining overall crop adaptability and yield potential. Soils are considered only in general terms, for water-holding capacity and major physical limitations. A general explanation of AEZ is available from the FAO. See also the AEZWIN computer program and the Global AEZ website.
An attempt to extend land evaluation to make concepts of long-term sustainability of land-use system explicit in the evaluation.
Land evaluation as the central step in the process of stakeholder-centred rural land use planning.
Proceedings of a 1997 workshop.
Reference evapotranspiration, water use, irrigation requirements.
Learn from someone who knows what he's talking about...
Cornell University
Includes my (somewhat outdated) lecture notes.
Soil Survey Interpretation
From the New South Wales (Australia) Soil And Land Information System (SALIS)
Part of the Land Resources Assessment, from the Department of Agriculture and Food (Western Australia) Includes a comprehensive report on Land evaluation standards.
Several organisations are now producting CD-ROMs to present interpreted soils information for their area. The following are links to these products descriptions elsewhere in the Compendium.
(General Techical Report W0-68; September 2005). Includes interpretation tables for soil-related forestry interpretations.
NRCS (USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service)
Soil Interpretations Rating Guides (PDF, 588Kb) from the (US) National Soil Survey Handbook.
These are no longer maintained; the version here dates from the 1993 NSSH. Include suitability ratings and restrictive features for building site development, construction material, recreational development, sanitary facilities, waste management, water management, forest land suitability, wildlife habitat, and agronomic practices.
Conservation Engineering Tools and Documents
A tremendous resource for soil & water conservation and small engineering works. A few of these many documents are highlighted below.
Dams, drainage, runoff, composting, constructed wetlands, stream corridors, irrigation, statistical methods for hydrology ...
A major use of many soil surveys is to provide information on soil behaviour to irrigation projects. The Irrigation Guide provides technical information and procedures that can be used for successful planning, design, and management of irrigation systems. It is organised as a set of PDF files, with an HTML table of contents.
LESA provides a framework to numerically rank land parcels (planning units) for farmland preservation vs. urban development based on local resource evaluation and site considerations. Include links to the LESA manual.
Includes a scoring example. Incorporates the Storie Index which has been used in CA since the 1930's.
Agronomy & Crop Requirements
An important application of soil survey is in production agriculture, horticulture, fruits, etc. The sources listed here mostly concentrate on plant production, of which soil requirements are only one part.
Soil properties for plant growth:
A guide to recognising soil attributes relevant to plant growth and plant selection (PDF, 1.5Mb)
by Allen Hewitt (Landcare New Zealand). Written in popular language, with clear pictures on how to recognize soil features that affect plant growth: wetness, root barrier, stoniness, porosity, natural nutrient status, drought proneness.
New Crop Resource Online Program
from Purdue University
A comprehensive resource with information on both `new' and traditional crops. Includes an extensive list of reference books , some of which are on-line (including the fascinating `Lost Crops of the Incas'), and an index of crops, with links to extensive refence information, often including soil requirements, for each crop. An especially comprehensive reference is New Crops for Canadian Agriculture, from the symposium Perspectives on New Crops and New Uses
Written by the University of Wisconsin. It has disappeared from their site, so here is the copy stored at Purdue...
"...address[es] the need for detailed information on the production of a number of agronomic crops adapted to the upper Midwest [USA]. Our intent is to provide county extension agents and others in educational roles a concise, uniform source of information on those field crops which may be considered as alternatives to traditional farm commodities.
Computer Programs
Developed at the Laboratory of Soil Science, Ghent University (B). "WLES encapsulates the domain knowledge of LE in a user friendly manner and provides the LE service through its Web interface to researchers, model builders and policy makers, whenever a quantitative assessment of land productivity is concerned."
Allows land evaluators to build expert systems to evaluate land according to the FAO Framework. Somewhat outdated but still useful, especially as the first qualitative or semi- quantitative step in a project or regional scale land evaluation exercise.
This is a semi-integrated collection of PC programs for agro-ecological land evaluation, especially in Mediterranean regions.
An application of the FAO's Agro-ecological Zoning methodology, incorporating multi-criteria decision making analysis.
| Author: D G Rossiter |
URL:
http://www.itc.nl/personal/rossiter/research/rsrch_ss_le.html
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| E-Mail: rossiter@itc.nl | Last Updated: 2010_011 |
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