Excerpt
Using computers—in particular geographic information systems (GIS)—to aid soil surveys and land evaluation is well established in the United States. Nichols and Bartelli, for example, were among the first to demonstrate the potential of computers in soil survey interpretation. Soon after, Jansen and Fenton described the use of computers to store and process soil information. In recent years the Natural Resources Conservation Service (formerly the Soil Conservation Service) has used GIS for storing, manipulating, and retrieving soil map information (Burrough et al.). There is increasing use in the United States of GIS as a means for interpreting land resource data (Bliss and Reybold).
In marked contrast to the United States, very little soil survey and land evaluation research—using computers or GIS—has been done in countries bordering the Mediterranean sea. Ferrari and Magaldi have published a methodology for land suitability assessment in the Mediterranean. Although GIS processing capabilities are not used in that study, computer plots illustrate land evaluation results for selected areas in Italy.
In Spain, De La Rosa, et al., developed a microcomputer-based land evaluation system called MicroLEIS, which is designed to be applicable throughout the Mediterranean region. Microleis is …
Footnotes
S.P. Theocharopoulos and F. Tsouloucha are senior research fellow and researcher, respectively, at the National Agricultural Research Foundation, Soil Science Institute, Lykovrissi, Greece. D.A. Davidson is professor and head of the Department of Environmental Science, and J.N. McArthur is a chief technician, University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland. The collaborative project between the University of Stirling (United Kingdom) and the Soil Science Institute (Greece) was supported by a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) grant and by the British Council.
- Copyright 1995 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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