Soil classification generally aims to establish a taxonomy based on breaking the soil continuum into homogeneous groups that can highlight the essential differences in soil properties and functions between classes.The two most widely used modern soil classification schemes are Soil Taxonomy (ST) and World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB).With the development of computers and technology, digital and quantitative approaches have been developed. These new techniques that include the spatial

more »

... prediction of soil properties or classes, relies on finding the relationships between soil and the auxiliary information that explain the soil forming factors or processes and finally predict soil patterns on the landscape. These approaches are commonly referred to as digital soil mapping (DSM) (14). A key component of any DSM mapping activity is the method used to define the relationship between soil observation and auxiliary information (4). Several types of machine learning approaches have been applied for digital soil mapping of soil classes, such as logistic and multinomial logistic regressions (10,12), random forests (15), neural networks (3,13) and classification trees (22,4). Many decisions about the soil use and management are based on the soil differences that cannot be captured by higher taxonomic levels (i.e., order, suborder and great group) (4). In low relief areas such as plains, it is expected that the soil forming factors are more homogenous and auxiliary information explaining soil forming factors may have low variation and cannot show the soil variability. Materials and Methods: The study area is located in the Shahrekord plain of Chaharmahal-Va-Bakhtiari province. According tothe semi-detailed soil survey (16), 120 pedons with approximate distance of 750 m were excavated and described according to the "field book for describing and sampling soils" (19). Soil samples were taken from different genetic horizons, air dried and grounded. Soil physicochemical properties were determined. Based o [...]