Digital soil mapping using artificial neural networks

In the context of a growing demand of high‐resolution spatial soil information for environmental planning and modeling, fast and accurate prediction methods are needed to provide high‐quality digital soil maps. Thus, this study focuses on the development of a methodology based on artificial neural networks (ANN) that is able to spatially predict soil units. Within a test area in Rhineland‐Palatinate (Germany), covering an area of about 600 km², a digital soil map was predicted. Based on feed‐forward ANN with the resilient backpropagation learning algorithm, the optimal network topology was determined with one hidden layer and 15 to 30 cells depending on the soil unit to be predicted. To describe the occurrence of a soil unit and to train the ANN, 69 different terrain attributes, 53 geologic‐petrographic units, and 3 types of land use were extracted from existing maps and databases. 80% of the predicted soil units (n = 33) showed training errors (mean square error) of the ANN below 0.1, 43% were even below 0.05. Validation returned a mean accuracy of over 92% for the trained network outputs. Altogether, the presented methodology based on ANN and an extended digital terrain‐analysis approach is time‐saving and cost effective and provides remarkable results.