Important legal notice
			Land Management & Natural Hazards Unit	SOIL
European Commission	Joint Research Centre	Institute for Environment and Sustainability		EU Soils Web Site
Soil Atlas of Europe

The soil of Europe

Soil maps

Digital mapping -the future By using geographic information systems (see Page 97), global positioning systems (GPS) and information collected by remote sensing (i.e. sensors and cameras mounted on aircraft and satellites) to help create maps in the field, vast improvements in consistency, speed of production and accuracy will be realized. When soil is not covered by vegetation, aerial photographs and satellite images are useful for soil inventory and for analysis of soilscapes. Four main factors influence the soil reflectance in remotely sensed images: mineral composition, soil moisture levels, organic matter content and surface soil texture. The above picture is a digital image acquired by the Thematic Mapper sensor on the Landsat Earth Observation satellite. Orbiting at an altitude of 750 km the Landsat satellite repeats its coverage of the earth every 16 days while the onboard sensors capture an image of about 185 kilometres x 185 kilometres. This scene shows an area in central Poland at the end of September when the majority of the landscape exhibits bare soil. The image clearly shows that the locations of Phaeozems (purple) contrast strongly with the bright Luvisols. Also visible are Fluvisols of river valleys that can be identified as linear green features of permanent grass pastures. The very dark areas (e.g. upper part of the image) are forested. The nominal resolution of the Thematic Mapper sensor is 30 metres (Eurimage Landsat Scene 190/23 acquired 26.09.1991 – SB). The picture on the right is a photograph taken from a special survey camera onboard an aeroplane flying at approximately 2000 metres. Using such an image and supporting fieldwork, a trained analyst can map the locations of Humic Gleysols (dark brown), Luvisols (bright) and Gleyic Luvisols (darker than Luvisols) on the image. Artificial underground drains are visible in the top-right corner of image (GUGiK Poland).

Page 36
	Previous Page		Next Page
		Contents Page