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Correct citation: Li, Z., Huffman, T., Zhang, A., Zhou, F., McConkey, B., 2012, Spatially locating soil classes within complex soil polygons - Mapping soil capability for agriculture in Saskatchewan Canada. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 152(5): 59-67. |
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This product provides soil capability classes for the agricultural region in Saskatchewan, as defined by the Canada Land Inventory (CLI). The CLI soil capability for agriculture classification system assigns each soil type to one of seven classes based on the degree of limitations affecting their agricultural use. Class 1 soils have no significant limitations to field crop production, while Class 7 soils have no capability for agriculture. According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (2009), Class 1–3 soils are considered suitable for the sustained production of common field crops; Class 4 soils are transitional and need conservation practices; Class 5 soils are suitable only for perennial forages; and Class 6 soils are suitable for grazing of natural vegetation only and improvement practices are not feasible. A Decision Tree classification method with a boosting algorithm was used in spatially locating individual soil capability classes as estimated in the complex symbol of the CLI database. The input metrics used for the classification include the first four principal components of the original Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) derived from time-series Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS) 16-day composite data, as well as phenological parameters, topographic factors, land cover and spatial dependence images. Validation showed high Kappa coefficients (0.88) for the mapped soil capability classes within homogeneous soil polygons and high R-squares (0.87-0.98) between the mapped soil area and CLI-estimated area within heterogeneous polygons. |