Mapping the distribution of soil properties on a large scale using ground penetrating radar measurements coupled to a GIS driven soil evolution model.
Dr. Mark Mulligan, Department of Geography, King's College London.
(to be agreed), Department of Physics, King's College London.
One of the most important components of tropical forest ecology and the sensitivity of tropical forest to environmental change are the properties of the soil. Soil properties are important in forest hydrology, in determining plant and thus animal species occurrence, and diversity and in regulating the response of these properties to deforestation. The soil determines the hydrological and biogeochemical behaviour of the land surface following land use change.
Soil properties are, however, notoriously spatially variable and extremely difficult to measure - requiring the construction of soil observation pits - a time consuming and labour intensive task in any environment. An alternative is to use remote sensing techniques to interpolate between soil pits and integrate this information with a digital terrain model for interpolation of soil properties between isolated measurement sites on the basis of landscape factors controlling soil development : geology, drainage, vegetation cover and slope/aspect.
Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a recently developed technology that can be used for the characterisation of important soil properties such as soil depth, horizonisation and soil porosity. Mulligan has been involved in the use of this technology in the characterisation of soil properties for some time and is currently involved in the development of software methods for defining soil properties on the basis of GPR data with Sensors and Software (Canada) Ltd. A series of soil pits, intersected with GPR transects will provide the basic data around which simple models of variation in key soil properties with landscape factors will be developed. The models will then be run with the HERB GIS to produce a detailed parameterisation of soil properties throughout the Telembi and Guiza catchments.
The parameterisation will then be validated by random point sampling and with reference to published material. The outcome of this thesis will be a detailed examination of soil conditions, soil susceptability and suitability for land use other than the natural vegetation cover.
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