Hands-on Digital Soil Mapping 2022

Five-day course from Monday 16 May to Friday 20 May 2022

We aim for an on-site course in Wageningen. Depending on the covid-19 situation we may need to revert to a completely online course or to an on-site course with hybrid options for on-line participation. A final decision will be taken before 1 March 2022.

Overview | Registration and fees | Who is it for? | Software installation | Programme | Materials

Overview

This course introduces methods and software for management, analysis and mapping of soil type and soil properties within the R environment for statistical computing. The course alternates between lectures and computer exercises and covers a variety of subjects, such as geostatistics, machine learning for soil mapping, soil functional mapping, proximal soil sensing, quantification of uncertainty, sampling for mapping and statistical validation. The course aims at soil geographers and environmental scientists who want to learn more about the theory and practice of digital soil mapping. After this course, participants will be able to apply the methods learnt to their own datasets. Lecturers are experienced pedometricians and soil data analysis specialists.

Gerard Heuvelink, course coordinator (geostatistics, uncertainty quantification)
Bas Kempen (machine learning)
Laura Poggio (data preparation, machine learning)
Giulio Genova (data preparation)
Fenny van Egmond (remote and proximal soil sensing)
Johan Leenaars (mapping plant-available soil water and nutrients)
Maria Ruiperez Gonzalez (mapping plant-available soil water and nutrients)
Stephan Mantel (virtual visit World Soil Museum)
David Rossiter (geostatistics, data preparation, sampling for statistical validation, guest lecture)
Titia Mulder, guest lecturer (remote and proximal soil sensing)
Dick Brus, guest lecturer (sampling for statistical validation)

Registration and fees

The registration fee covers the costs of all course materials, lectures and teaching resources. It also covers the coffee breaks, warm lunches and the Spring School dinner in Wageningen on Tuesday. This course is organized on a cost-recovery basis i.e. no profit is made from the course fees. Upon completing the course, participants will receive a certificate and free access to software and datasets used during the course. For information about the fees:

https://www.isric.org/utilise/capacity-building/springschool/costs-and-payment

Registration is now open. Note that when registering, you will be redirected to a Wageningen University & Research page in a new window to process your registration and payment. Please read carefully our cost and payment section.

Who is it for?

This course is intended for soil and environmental professionals, researchers and PhD-students interested in producing soil maps and/or using local, regional and global soil datasets for digital soil mapping. Participants must have a basic level of statistics, geo-information science and soil/environmental science. Experience with computer programming in R is advantageous but not required. Those not familiar with R will be asked to run a self-study tutorial prior to the course. A number of recorded sessions from a previous Spring School can be accessed via the ISRIC YouTube channel at: http://youtube.com/c/ISRICorg.

Software installation

Please note that to participate in the DSM course you need to install R and RStudio software prior to the course. Software installation instructions can be found here, and the associated R code to test your installation here. Please read and follow these carefully to ensure you are fully prepared to the Spring School.

Preliminary programme

All times are Central European Summer Time zone (CEST), that is UTC+2.

DAY 1 (Monday, 16 May 2022)

Time	Topic	Type	Lecturer
8.30 - 9.00	Registration and coffee
9.00 – 9.45	Official opening of the ISRIC Spring School Group photo		Rik van den Bosch
9.45 – 10.15	Course introduction and overview		Gerard Heuvelink
10.15 – 10.45	Geostatistics for soil mapping	Lecture	Gerard Heuvelink
10.45 – 11.15	Morning break
11.15 – 12.30	Geostatistics for soil mapping	Lecture	Gerard Heuvelink
12.30 – 13.30	Lunch
13.30 – 15.00	Geostatistics for soil mapping	Computer practical	Gerard Heuvelink David Rossiter
15.00 – 15.30	Afternoon break
15.30 – 17.00	Geostatistics for soil mapping	Computer practical and feedback	Gerard Heuvelink David Rossiter

DAY 2 (Tuesday, 17 May 2022)

Block	Topic	Type	Lecturer
9.00 – 10.30	Geostatistics for soil mapping	Lecture	Gerard Heuvelink
10.30 – 11.00	Morning break
11.00 – 12.30	Soil and covariate data preparation	Lecture	Giulio Genova
12.30 – 13.30	Lunch
13.30 – 15.00	Soil and covariate data preparation	Computer practical	Giulio Genova Laura Poggio David Rossiter
15.00 – 15.30	Afternoon break
15.30 – 17.00	Soil and covariate data preparation	Computer practical and feedback	Giulio Genova Laura Poggio David Rossiter
19.00 – 22.00	Dinner in town

DAY 3 (Wednesday, 18 May 2022)

Block	Topic	Type	Lecturer
9.00 – 10.30	Remote and proximal soil sensing	Lecture	Titia Mulder
10.30 – 11.00	Morning break
11.00 – 12.30	Remote and proximal soil sensing	Computer practical and feedback	Titia Mulder Fenny van Egmond
12.30 – 13.30	Lunch
13.30 – 15.30	Machine learning for soil mapping	Lecture	Bas Kempen Laura Poggio
15:30 – 16.30	Afternoon Break
15.30 – 17.00	Machine learning for soil mapping	Computer practical	Bas Kempen Laura Poggio

DAY 4 (Thursday, 19 May 2022)

Block	Topic	Type	Lecturer
9.00 – 10.30	Machine learning for soil mapping	Computer practical and feedback	Bas Kempen Laura Poggio
10.30 – 11.00	Morning break
11.00 – 12.30	Sampling for statistical validation	Lecture	Dick Brus
12.30 – 13.30	Lunch
13.30 – 15.30	Sampling for statistical validation	Lecture & computer practical	Dick Brus David Rossiter
15.30 – 16.00	Afternoon break
16.00 – 17.00	Sampling for statistical validation	Computer practical and feedback	Dick Brus David Rossiter

DAY 5 (Friday, 20 May 2022)

Block	Topic	Type	Lecturer
9.00 – 10.30	Mapping plant-available soil water and nutrients	Lecture and computer practical	Johan Leenaars
10.30 – 11.00	Morning break
11.00 – 12.30	Mapping plant-available soil water and nutrients	Computer practical and feedback	Johan Leenaars Maria Ruiperez-Gonzalez
12.30 – 13.30	Lunch
13.30 – 14.45	Visit World Soil Museum		Stephan Mantel
14.45 – 15.00	Course evaluation and certificates		Gerard Heuvelink
15.00 – 15.15	Afternoon break
15.15 – 16.00	Valuing the soil resource	Invited lecture	David Rossiter
16.00 – 17.30	Closing words, drinks & snacks		Rik van den Bosch

Materials

You must use your own computer or laptop and have recent releases of R and RStudio installed (see above). Participants receive all workshop materials (test datasets, R scripts, lecture slides, tutorials) during the workshop.

Contact:

ISRIC Spring School