Developing Methods for a errain Attribute Derived Soil Map

摘要

Working as a field soil scientist mapping in the Alabama Coastal Plains right after receiving a degree in hydrology and watershed management provided me an opportunity to see soils from a hydrolo-gist's perspective—giving thought to how water movement on the landscape provided the energy to change soils and result in the observed variability in the landscape. I also reflected on how hydrologists use soil survey information for model input. Within hydrology, soil properties, uncertainty of property values, and scales are very important. Thinking about the format of the soil survey in the context of the hydrology made me think about how we as soil scientists deliver the data. We have discreet boundary soil polygon map units with single values and wide ranges for most of the soil properties, with no clear indication about their spatial distribution within map units (Fig. 1a). Additionally, many soil series have overlapping ranges for most of their soil properties, which creates difficulties when using soil data for hydrologic modeling (Fig. 2). Soil