The Dokuchaev hypothesis as a basis for predictive digital soil mapping (on the 125th anniversary of its publication)

Abstract

Predictive digital soil mapping is widely used in soil science. Its objective is the prediction of the spatial distribution of soil taxonomic units and quantitative soil properties via the analysis of spatially distributed quantitative characteristics of soil-forming factors. Western pedometrists stress the scientific priority and principal importance of Hans Jenny’s book (1941) for the emergence and development of predictive soil mapping. In this paper, we demonstrate that Vasily Dokuchaev explicitly defined the central idea and statement of the problem of contemporary predictive soil mapping in the year 1886. Then, we reconstruct the history of the soil formation equation from 1899 to 1941. We argue that Jenny adopted the soil formation equation from Sergey Zakharov, who published it in a well-known fundamental textbook in 1927. It is encouraging that this issue was clarified in 2011, the anniversary year for publications of Dokuchaev and Jenny.