| Satellite remote sensing for soil mapping and sustainable agricultural management in Iran |
| Paper ID : 1157-SMPR |
| Authors: |
|
Fereydoon Sarmadian * Soil Science Department, Faculty of Agricultyre |
| Abstract: |
| All natural resources… are soil or derivatives of soil. Farms, ranges, crops, and livestock, forests, irrigation water and even water power resolve themselves into questions of soil. Soil is therefore the basic natural resource. Nearly all of the food, fuel and fibers used by humans are produced on soil. Soil is also essential for water and ecosystem health. Nowadays, in the face of rapidly growing population, there is a renewed awareness of the finite nature of the world’s soil resources. In this regard, optical remote sensing observations have been shown to be powerful techniques for the quantitative determination and modelling of a range of soil properties. the use of remotely sensed data has a long tradition in assisting the mapping of soil properties, air photography being used to segment the landscape into soil-landscape units for which soil composition was established by sampling, in Iran use of air photography for soil survey established from 1954. From the perspective of a policy-maker interested in topics such as food security and land degradation in Iran, this situation requires up-to-date and relevant soil information at regional and continental scales. The paper reviews how a range of multispectral sensors can be used in the delineation of soil units, as well as in the assessment of some of their key properties and threats to soil functions from pressures such as water and wind erosion and salinization. Remote sensing is shown to be a key component of the emerging discipline of digital soil mapping. |
| Keywords: |
| pedology, remote sensing imagery, digital soil mapping. |
| Status : Paper Accepted (Poster Presentation) |
