Applications of Remote Sensing in Land Resource Inventory and Mapping

Comprehensive information on soil resources in terms of type, extent, physical and chemical properties and limitations/capabilities is required for optimal management of land resources and monitoring changes in land qualities. The technological advancements in the remote sensing have revolutionized the land resource inventory and mapping process. The advantage of remote sensing data is that it provides synoptic view of the terrain, which enables to understand the relief, land use and drainage conditions for better delineation of landform-soil units. Further, digital elevation models (DEMs) have facilitated surface parameterization by attributes such as elevation, slope, aspect, flow accumulation, plan and profile curvature to obtain relief or surface topography units. Hyperspectral remote sensing and soil spectroscopy data can be analysed using statistical and chemometric techniques to derive information about wide variety of soil attributes, which can be used for digital soil mapping.