A regional scale soil mapping approach using integrated AVHRR and DEM data

Abstract

There is an increasing need for reasonably accurate small-scale soil databases. The compilation of a continental or global-scale soil database requires a lot of spatially and thematically accurate soil data. The aim of this study was to test a method for small-scale soil mapping in Italy using Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and digital elevation data. This method was employed in an earlier study in Hungary for a much smaller area and a significantly different soil-forming environment. An integrated, 45-layer AVHRR-terrain database was used for the study, including a digital elevation model (DEM), slope, curvature, aspect, potential drainage density, and the five bands of AVHRR data for eight different dates. The data were processed using the Discriminant Analysis Feature Extraction (DAFE) function, which is based on a canonical analysis procedure. Two types of images (basic and transformed) were classified using the maximum likelihood classifier. Two training sets were chosen that have identical geographic coverage, but differ in the level of soil classification. One set was based on the soil units (SU) of the FAO-revised legend, while the other set represented major soil groupings (MSG). The best 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 and 45 layers were selected using the Bhattachryya feature selection method and were then classified. The results of the different sets were compared. The performance of the purely AVHRR and purely terrain-data-based images, respectively, were also interpreted. The results indicate that the terrain descriptors alone are not sufficient for soil classification. However, the feature selection algorithms always selected the DEM and its derivatives among the first ones, highlighting their importance for soil-landscape characterization. When using AVHRR data alone, test class performances of 49.8 percent (MSG) and 48.6 percent (SU) were achieved. Integration of terrain data into the AVHRR database produced relatively small improvements (4.6 and 2.8 percent). The best test class performances were achieved when all available channels were used for the classification, namely 51.4 for the FAO's SUs and 54.4 for the MSGs on the basic image, and 51.7 and 54.4 respectively on the DAFE-transformed images. The most informative AVHRR bands were found to be from the spring period (April-May), while the most abundant bands were the visible-red (band 1) and bands 3 and 4.