LAUSR

Abstract Soil is an important part of natural environment which should be nurtured and monitored regularly to maintain its fertility. Accurate and quantitative spatial soil information is necessary for dealing with burning global issues such as land degradation and food security. Digital soil mapping is one such innovation which explicit spatial soil information with the help of recent advanced technologies. Digital soil mapping has moved from research phase to operational phase across the countries but no fully fledged research has been carried out in India. In this present paper, we discuss the need for a digital soil mapping programme in India by highlighting the basic digital soil mapping principles and we also present two case studies of the DSM approach on mapping of basic soil properties and associated uncertainties using a Quantile Regression Forest in Karnataka, India.