Interactive Evaluation Module for Soil Quality Data - An Application within the Austrian Soil Information System BORIS

摘要

Since 1991 the Austrian Federal Environment Agency (FEA) has been developing BORIS, a nation-wide soil information system in order to make existing soil data of Austria available in a harmonised way. For the harmonisation a handbook called ,,data key soil science" has been elaborated by FEA in co-operation with other institutions concerned with soil issues. As the majority of data in BORIS lie within the competence of the individual provincial governments this system enables an evaluation of soil data across provincial borders. BORIS, as an expert tool of assessment and prognosis, shall provide a basis for effective soil protection in Austria. The data can either be accessed by a special EDP programme (BORIS INTERN) or by two internet applications: BORIS INFO and BORIS EXPERT. The BORIS EXPERT tool offers an assessment module to evaluate analytical values contained in the database by comparing them with certain national and international reference values such as limit values, standard values, guidelines or background values. The analysed data and the reference values can be selected according to individual requirements using special query masks. Depending on the available reference values, data on heavy metals and some micronutrients can be assessed. The assessments are calculated as positive exceedances for each selected soil sample and the number of exceedances will be reported as a summary. The results can be shown as tables or maps.