Dr. Gan-Lin Zhang graduated from Huazhong Agricultural University
in 1987, with the Bachelor of Agronomy and obtained his PhD of Soil Science
from Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1993. He was
promoted as professor of soil science in 2001. His research fields cover soil
genesis, soil classification, soil mapping and soil evaluation. He is a grantee
of the Distinguished Young Scientist Fund of the National Natural Science
Foundation. He served as the Vice-Chair and the Chair of the Commission of Soil
Genesis, International Union of Soil Science (C1.3, IUSS) during 2002 and 2014.
He is now the vice-chair of the Working Group of Soils of Urban, Industrial,
Traffic and Mining Areas (SUITMA), IUSS. He also served the Chair of the Committee
of Soil Genesis, Classification and Geography (2004-2012), Soil Science Society
of China. He is currently on the editorial board of Geoderma, Soil Use and
Management, Science China (Earth Science), Acta Pedologica Sinica and Arid Zone
Research. He is the leader of the East Asian Node of GlobalSoilMap.net Project
and a member of the FAO Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soil (ITPS). He
has authored (co-authored) a number of books and book chapters as well as more
than 300 papers in Chinese and international peer-reviewed journals, covering
soil genesis, soil classification, soil mapping, soil information system and
soil quality evaluation, as well as urban soil and environment.
Dick J. Brus has studied geology and physical geography. He works
at Wageningen University and Research Centre for 32
years. After his work on the geomorphological mapping of the Netherlands at
scale 1:50,000 and on the Dutch Soil Classification System, in 1990 he moved to
the field of pedometrics. His main fields of interest are sampling theory,
geostatistics, (generalized) linear regression analysis and uncertainty
analysis. He has rich research experiences in developing and applying
statistical methods for natural resources inventory and monitoring. He has
published numerous papers in peer-reviewed, international journals on these
topics. He is second co-author of the book ’Sampling for Natural Resource
Monitoring’, published in 2006 by Springer. This book is widely acclaimed in soil, earth, environmental, agriculture, and
statistical sciences. He was the Vice-chair of the International Union of Soil
Science commission Pedometrics. He was awarded Best Paper on Pedometrics in
1996, 2004 and 2011 by the Pedometrics Commission of the International Union
for Soil Science (IUSS). In 2014 he was granted by the Chinese Academy of Science a Visiting Professorship
for Senior International Scientists.
Dr. Feng Liu is working as an associate professor in soil
geography, Department of Soil Resources and Remote Sensing Applications,
Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China. His
work on soils started with his PhD thesis on predictive soil mapping over low
relief areas such as plains and gently undulating terrains. His research
interest and projects focus on this topic. He is a member of the advisory board
for the Pedometrics Commission, for the period of 2014-2018. He obtained his
MSc degree from the Department of Geography, University of Lanzhou, and his PhD
degree from the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural resources,
Chinese Academy of Sciences. He had done one-year soil mapping work as a
visiting scholar in the group of Canadian Soil Information System (CanSIS) at
Ottawa.
Dr. Xiao-Dong Song is working as an assistant professor in soil
geography, Department of Soil Resources and Remote Sensing Applications,
Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, China. He
completed his PhD in soil science in 2013 at Nanjing Normal University. He was
awarded Doctoral National Scholarship in 2013.
Philippe Lagacherie trained as an Agronomist and completed his PhD
in soil science in 1992. He obtained his senior scientist degree from
Montpellier 2 University in 2002 for his researches on digital soil mapping
methods. He is currently senior researcher at INRA Montpellier (France) and
lead a research team of the LISAH research unit entitled “spatial structures
and dynamics of the cultivated landscapes”. Dr Philippe Lagacherie has been
involved in research dealing with Digital Soil Mapping, remote sensing and
spatial modelling of cultivated landscapes. He developed spatial approaches
that associated field knowledge, GIS, remote sensing, geostatistics, and fuzzy
logic. He organised the first international workshop on Digital Soil mapping in
Montpellier (2004) and is the co-editor of the first book on Digital Soil
Mapping published in 2007. He has conducted several research projects at the
crossroad of soil, agronomy and hydrology. Dr Philippe Lagacherie has been
nominated in the editorial boards of Geoderma and Int. J. of Earth Observation
and Geo-information.
This book contains papers presented at the 6th Global Workshop on Digital Soil Mapping, held 11-14 November 2014 at the Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences of Nanjing, China. Digital soil mapping is advancing on different fronts at different paces throughout the world. The researches and applications on DSM are moving from method development to realizations in different scales and regions, serving the generation of national and continental to global soil grids. Meanwhile, new ideas and insights on mapping complex soil-landscapes such as flat plains,anthropogenically altered agriculture and urban spaces are emerging, with the help of new paradigms and models.The goal of the sixth workshop was to review and discuss the state of the art in digital soil mapping, and to explore strategies for bridging research, production, and environmental applications.
This book provides a very useful and comprehensive overview of the status of digital soil mapping, in which graduate students, scientists and specialists working within the field of geography can find the spatial prediction approaches and related theory.