TITLE:
Analysis of Digital Elevation Model and LNDSAT Data Using Geographic Information System for Soil Mapping in Urban Areas
AUTHORS:
Mohamed Ali Mohamed
KEYWORDS:
Soil Mapping, Soil Survey, Terrain Modeling, Terrain Attributes, Spatial Analysis, DEM
JOURNAL NAME:
Natural Resources,
Vol.8 No.12,
December
26,
2017
ABSTRACT: This study applies digital analysis methods of
topographic data derived from digital
elevation models (DEMs) and Landsat remotely sensed spectral data using
GIS tools to evaluate the quality and limitations of the morphometric
parameters (terrain attributes: TAs). This aims to check its suitability for
digital soil mapping (DSM) and survey in
urban areas at the target scale 1:50,000. This scale represents
the standard scale level for compiling soil inventories within all German states. The study is conducted on an
urban area of 112.68 km2 in the southwest part of the state of Berlin in Germany. These relief units are
the basis for determining the soil mapping units at the scale of 1:50,000. The generated preliminary soil map was compared to soil maps made
using traditional soil survey methods. For
the mainly natural soils, the equivalence area is 94.91%, and for the anthropogenic soils, the equivalence area
is 95.34%. The proposed methodology is adequate for preliminary mapping of
soil units based on the digital derivation
of TAs. Landsat scenes are spatially explicit, physical representations of environmental covariates on the land surface.
The free DEM-ASTER in combination
with Landsat OLI images is found to be the appropriate model to represent the terrain surface and derive the TAs for environmental modeling and
fitting of derivation the relief units and their topography features. However,
the 30 m spatial resolution and the fairly coarse spectral resolution of DEMs
and Landsat images limit their utility for digital soil mapping at this scale
in urban areas with little topographic variation.