Spacial prediction and mapping of continuous soil classes

Abstract Some problems associated with the use of discrete classes in soil mapping are discussed and a new approach to the production of soil class maps which attempts to circumvent such difficulties is presented. The method involves prediction of k +1 continuous classes resulting from a fuzzy k -means with extragrades grouping procedure, onto a fine grid. The prediction of individual class memberships is optimized by using ordinary kriging of log-ratio transformed memberships with a non-linear back transformation. The resulting k +1 rastered maps can be manipulated in various ways to produce isogram, choropleth or chorochromatic maps. In addition to potentially providing more soil information to the user this procedure also has implications in cartography and for geographic information systems. An example is given from a 6 km × 8 km area in the eastern part of the Netherlands.

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