By Megan Winslow
To better understand the planet’s topsoil, an international team of scientists, including University of Florida researchers, created the first high-resolution global maps of key soil properties.
Their assessment, published in the journal The Innovation, could influence everything from agricultural management and sustainable use of resources to water and food security.
The study integrates more than 150,000 soil observations — including private research data — to reveal soil health properties like organic carbon stock, clay content, pH and bulk density. It uses advanced Earth observation technologies and machine-learning models to generate maps with a 90-meter resolution. That level of detail is finer than any previous global soil dataset.
The maps are publicly available for researchers, policymakers and global development organizations, and they allow users to visualize and analyze soil characteristics across continents.
Source : ufl.edu