RESUMO
Legacy soil data have been produced over 70 years in nearly all countries of the world. Unfortunately, data, information and knowledge are still currently fragmented and at risk of getting lost if they remain in a paper format. To process this legacy data into consistent, spatially explicit and continuous global soil information, data are being rescued and compiled into databases. Thousands of soil survey reports and maps have been scanned and made available online. The soil profile data reported by these data sources have been captured and compiled into databases. The total number of soil profiles rescued in the selected countries is about 800,000. Currently, data for 117, 000 profiles are compiled and harmonized according to GlobalSoilMap specifications in a world level database (WoSIS). The results presented at the country level are likely to be an underestimate. The majority of soil data is still not rescued and this effort should be pursued. The data have been used to produce soil property maps. We discuss the pro and cons of top-down and bottom-up approaches to produce such maps and we stress their complementarity. We give examples of success stories. The first global soil property maps using rescued data were produced by a top-down approach and were released at a limited resolution of 1km in 2014, followed by an update at a resolution of 250m in 2017. By the end of 2020, we aim to deliver the first worldwide product that fully meets the GlobalSoilMap specifications.
RESUMO
Salt-affected soils are a major threat to agriculture especially in the semiarid regions of the world. The effective management of these soils requires adequate understanding of not only how water and, hence, solutes are transported within the soil, but also how soil salinity and sodicity spatially interact to determine soil structural breakdown. For sustainable agricultural production, information on quantitative soil quality, such as salinity, is required for effective land management and environmental planning. In this study, quantitative methods for mapping indicators of soil structural stability, namely salinity and sodicity, were developed to assess the effect of these primary indicators on soil structural breakdown. The current levels of soil salinity, as measured by electrical conductivity (EC) of the soil/water suspension, soil sodicity, represented by exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP), and aggregate stability, were assessed. Remote sensing, geographical information system (GIS), and geostatistical techniques--primarily regression-kriging and indicator-kriging--were used to spatially predict the soil sodicity and salinity. The patterns of salinity (EC) and sodicity (ESP>5%) were identified. The effect of land use on these soil quality indicators was found to be minimal. Co-spatial patterns were elucidated between sodic soils (defined by ESP>5%) and highly probable mechanically dispersive soils predicted from indicator-kriging of ASWAT scores. It was established that the incorporation of EC with ESP into an objective index, called electrolyte stability index (ESI=ESP/EC), gave a good indication of soil dispersion, although the threshold ESI value below which effective structural breakdown might occur is 0.025, which is twice as small as the expected 0.05. The discrepancies between ESI and ASWAT scores suggest that other soil factors than salinity and sodicity are affecting soil structural breakdown. This calls for further investigation. The study provides valuable information in the form of risk zones of soil structural breakdown for land management. These zones, with a probability of mechanical soil dispersion of >0.70, require immediate management attention with greater monitoring and amelioration techniques, particularly gypsum or lime application and/or altered cultivation techniques.
