NEED FOR PACIFIC DIGITAL SOIL LAYERS &

CORRESPONDING ACTIVITIES

Salote BaleisuvaPacific GIS/RS Conference 18-22nd November,2013

SPC/SOPAC

Outline

Why do we need digital soil information What do we have?? How we can produce Digital soil layers

Digital Soil Mapping

Also known as predictive soil mapping Computer assisted production of soils and

soil propertiesDSM makes extensive use of: Technological advances Computational advances

Why do we need digital soil information

We can use this information to make predictions based on soil properties

Increases the support and usefulness of soil survey in the future

provides information for modelling the dynamics of soil condition

Need for Digital Soil Layers

Agriculture planning requires soil information at 1:10,000 scale level for selected areas

Coconut resource and possibly forest inventories need soil information for stratification

Coconut Resource Inventories

Age estimation does not work on poor soils

Fertility is related to soil Essential to have capacity to recognize

the soil type in the field

What do we have????

We have the data/information on soil but lack the capacity and knowledge about soil

Producing digital soil layers ; e.g. Solomon islands

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Conclusion

We need to establish soil maps at 1:10,000 scale

We need to re-establish digital soil layers with available information

We need to build the capacity to recognize main soil types in coconut resource inventories

Thanks