Harmonized Soil Database of Ecuador (HESD): data from 2009 to 2015

[摘要] One of the largest challenges with soil informationaround the world is how to harmonize archived soil data from differentsources and how to make it accessible to soil scientist. In Ecuador, therehave been two major projects that have provided soil information, but themethodology of these projects, although comparable, did not coincide, especially with respect to howinformation was reported. Here, we present a new soil database for Ecuador,comprising 13 542 soil profiles with 51 713 measured soil horizons, including92 different edaphic variables. The original data were in a non-editable format(i.e., PDF), which made it difficult to access and process the information. Ourstudy provides an integrated framework that combines multiple analytic tools forautomatically converting legacy soil information from an analog format intousable digital soil mapping inputs across Ecuador. This framework allowed usto incorporate quantitative information on a broad set of soil propertiesand retrieve qualitative information on soil morphological propertiescollected in the profile description phase, which is rarely included in soildatabases. We present a new harmonized national soil database using aspecific methodology to preserve relevant information. The nationalrepresentativeness of soil information has been enhanced compared with otherinternational databases, and this new database contributes to filling thegaps in publicly available soil information across the country. The databaseis freely available at https://doi.org/10.6073/pasta/1560e803953c839e7aedef78ff7d3f6c (Armaset al., 2022).

[学科分类] 眼科学