Reanalysis of a global soil database for crop and environmental modeling

There is an increased need for detailed soil information that can be used for applications of crop and environmental modeling. The goal of this project was to conduct a reanalysis of the ISRIC-WISE 1.1 Soil Profile Dataset. As part of the procedures, the soil reanalysis database was fitted to the standard formats of the International Consortium for Agricultural Systems Application (ICASA). Thus, the soil reanalysis database tailors dynamic crop models such as the Cropping System Model (CSM) of the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT). During the reanalysis, the physical and chemical parameters of the soil profiles were revised and estimated, where necessary and possible, using pre-established ranges given by the literature and correlations among other more stable variable. To evaluate each of the 3404 reanalyzed soil profiles, the CSM-CERES-Maize model was run for a standard crop management scenario using both the original and the new improved soil databases. Nine hundred seventy-eight soil profiles were considered to be not useful during the reanalysis due to missing values for one or more critical variables and were, therefore, not considered for quality control procedures. A pre-diagnostic for only nitrogen and soil organic carbon in the original dataset showed 70% and 5% of missing values respectively. A sensitivity analysis based on crop simulations comparing the original and the reanalyzed soil databases, showed that 1294 soil profiles yielded different results due to improvement of either the original data or improved conversion procedures. The details and considerations for detecting missing and erroneous values and for estimating soil variable values are presented in this paper for further use. The final soil reanalysis global database contains 3404 soil profiles and is available at https:// harvestchoice.wufoo.com/forms/download-wisol. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.