THE RELATION BETWEEN COST AND UTILITY IN SOIL SURVEY

This paper discusses how to compare the utility of soil maps. For three contrasting areas, in Southern England, it compares the utilities of a number of single-property and general purpose (series) soil maps, produced by free and grid survey, at map scales from 1 :20,000–1:70,000. The‘purity’of series mapping units increases with survey effort. Where the soil boundaries had fairly clear external expression free survey was superior to grid survey. On average the purity of maps by grid survey was higher than for maps by free survey at comparable survey effort. The uniformity of soil properties within mapping units was measured by relative variance (RV)= within-unit variance/total variance, (1–RV) indicates the increased precision achieved by the soil map. It increased with survey effort. For series maps by free or grid survey (1–RV) depended on how closely soil properties were associated with profile classes, and on the extent to which soil boundaries could be mapped on their external expression. Free survey was preferred at scales between 1: 100,000 and 1:30,000, when the soil boundaries could be mapped on their external expression, (1–RV) for the profile classes on which the mapping units are defined puts a ceiling to the utility of series maps (grid or free) which is already nearly achieved at map scales near 1:25,000. Except for properties very poorly associated with profile classes, single property maps do not have great advantage over series maps at medium map scales, but they attain higher values of (1–RV) at scales greater than 1: 25,000.