Digital soil mapping in Germany - a review

Digital soil mapping as a tool to generate spatial soil information provides solutions for the growing demand for high-resolution soil maps worldwide. Even in highly developed countries like Germany, digital soil mapping becomes essential due to the decreasing, time-consuming, and expensive field surveys which are no longer affordable by the soil surveys of the individual federal states. This article summarizes the present state of soil survey in Germany in terms of digitally available soil data, applied digital soil mapping, and research in the broader field of pedometrics and discusses future perspectives. Based on the geomorphologic conditions in Germany, relief is a major driving force in soil genesis. This is expressed by the digital-soil mapping research which highlights the great importance of digital terrain attributes in combination with information on parent material in soil prediction. An example of digital soil mapping using classification trees in Thuringia is given as an introduction in digital soil-class mapping based on correlations to environmental covariates within the scope of the German classification system.