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Terrain-related Revision of Existing Soil Maps

M. Möller1, T. Koschitzki1, K.-J. Hartmann2
1 Geoflux GbR, Lessingstraße 37, D-06114 Halle (Saale)
Telephone: 00493451352244
Fax: 00493452394019
Email: moeller@geoflux.de
2 State Institute for Geology and Natural Resources Saxony-Anhalt, Köthener Straße 34, 06118 Halle (Saale)
Telephone: 04493455212117
Email: hartmann@lagb.mw.sachsen-anhalt.de

In Germany, federal geological surveys are responsible for mesoscale soil mapping.In the federal state Saxony-Anhalt, the soil map 1:50,000 results from an integration process of already existing soil maps (Hartmann 2006). These maps were mainly surveyed in the former East Germany where another classification system was valid. The data integration process was subjectively realized by soil surveyors and aimed primarily at the semantic transformation to the current valid classification system of the German Handbook of Soil Mapping (Ad-hoc-AG Boden 2005). While the former soil unit boundaries were generally taken over, the soil attributes were semantically aggregated. That means that the soil units, which originally represented genetically linked soils, were now described by only the dominant soil.

The resulting soil map does not contain any quality information and is therefore labeled as “preliminary” (in German: Vorläufige Bodenkarte 1:50,000 or VBK 50). Thus, a simple quality assessment of VBK 50 should be applied in a reproducible manner by the following general conditions: (1) Implementation of expert knowledge should be ensured; (2) No training or validation information was available for automatic classification approaches.

In this paper, on the example of VBK 50 we present a cost- and time-effective terrain-related revision of mesoscale soil maps. The revision bases on a state-wide available Digital Elevation Model with a resolution of 20 x 20 m (DEM 20) and focuses on the terrain-related soil properties floodplain membership, colluvium membership and humus layer thickness.

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  • "International Society for Geomorphometry (ISG) is a non-commercial, nongovernmental association of researchers and experts that are open for free exchange of knowledge and opinions about various aspects of DEM processing and Digital Terrain Modeling."

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