Spatially distributed information on soil properties were often identified as a critical input parameter for modelling soil functions and degradation risks. At the sametime, considerable research efforts in digital soil mapping have led to a well developed methodology to create high-resolution maps of key soil properties such as soil textural fractions, organic carbon content and pH value.
This session is concerned with the question on how to convert the increasing amount of geographically continuous soil information into soil functional understanding. It focuses on case studies from different spatial scales using interpolated soil data addressing problems such as soil erosion, soil compaction, carbon sequestration, soil fertility, soil respiration and the derivation of soil hydraulic properties. Besides applications, research is of particular interest which concentrates on methodological improvements. This includes, for instance, the quantitative propagation of the uncertainty in digital soil mapping predictions as well as the creation of three dimensional distributions of soil attributes to evaluate complete soil functions.
This session aims to bring together scientists from multiple soil-scientific disciplines to identify recent advances and future research priorities for the profitable use of digital soil mapping output in soil function and degradation risk modelling.