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18 December 2020 Amalgamation and harmonization of soil survey reports into a multi-purpose database
Shane Furze, Paul Arp
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Abstract

There is a growing demand for standardized, easily accessible, and detailed information pertaining to soil and its variability across the landscape. Typically, this information is only available for selected areas in the form of local or regional soil surveys reports which are difficult, and costly, to develop. Additionally, soil surveying protocols have changed with time, resulting in inconsistencies between surveys conducted over different periods. This article describes systematic procedures applied to generate an aspatial, terminologically, and unit-consistent, database for forest soils from county-based soil survey reports for the province of New Brunswick, Canada. The procedures involved (i) amalgamating data from individual soil surveys following a hierarchical framework, (ii) summarizing and grouping soil information by soil associations, (iii) assigning correct soil associates to each association, with each soil associate distinguished by drainage classification, (iv) assigning pedologically correct horizon sequences, as identified in the original soil surveys, to each soil associate, (v) assigning horizon descriptors and measured soil properties to each horizon, as outlined by the Canadian System of Soil Classification, and (vi) harmonizing units of measurement for individual soil properties. Identification and summarization of all soil associations (and corresponding soil associates) was completed with reference to the principal soil-forming factors, namely soil parent material, topographic surface expressions, soil drainage, and dominant vegetation type(s). This procedure, utilizing 17 soil surveys, resulted in an amalgamated database containing 106 soil associations, 243 soil associates, and 522 soil horizon sequences summarizing the variability of forest soil conditions across New Brunswick.

Copyright remains with the author(s) or their institution(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
Shane Furze and Paul Arp "Amalgamation and harmonization of soil survey reports into a multi-purpose database," Canadian Journal of Soil Science 101(2), 222-247, (18 December 2020). https://doi.org/10.1139/cjss-2020-0078
Received: 10 June 2020; Accepted: 28 September 2020; Published: 18 December 2020
KEYWORDS
Amalgamation
harmonization
soil database
soil surveys
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