<p>If/where you can confirm <em>without any doubt</em> that the sites of the legacy samples remain undisturbed by major natural or human changes then it should be safe to use it. Where there's been major land movement like slips, or the sample site has been dug up/paved over etc... then unfortunately you'll need to discard the entry. Unless they're forcefully disrupted mature soils tend to be quite stable over human timescales, treat them no differently than your more modern data points.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2024-08-25T03:09:18.330Z
2024-08-26T02:02:24.250Z
2024-08-26T02:02:24.250Z
Ash
<p>I am currently working on my master's thesis on Digital Soil Mapping – Soil Organic Carbon. Since I am using soil profiles from a legacy soil survey as training data, I am facing some confusion. The attributes meet my needs, but the temporal dimension poses a challenge.
I have over 700 soil profile points, covering the period from 1980 to 2005. I only want to use this data for the year 2003, but after filtering, the density of the profile points is low, covering only 50+ points.</p>
<p>I would like to ask, how can I resolve this issue? Can I use the entire sample set as training data despite the temporal differences? If so, is there a need for special treatment of this temporal attribute, such as harmonizing or aggregating SOC values up to 2003?</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>

<models><soil-science>
How to Handle Legacy Soil Data in Digital Soil Mapping (DSM)?
Ivannalis Saputra
# How to Handle Legacy Soil Data in Digital Soil Mapping (DSM)?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2024-08-24)

I am currently working on my master's thesis on Digital Soil Mapping – Soil Organic Carbon. Since I am using soil profiles from a legacy soil survey as training data, I am facing some confusion. The attributes meet my needs, but the temporal dimension poses a challenge.
I have over 700 soil profile points, covering the period from 1980 to 2005. I only want to use this data for the year 2003, but after filtering, the density of the profile points is low, covering only 50+ points.

I would like to ask, how can I resolve this issue? Can I use the entire sample set as training data despite the temporal differences? If so, is there a need for special treatment of this temporal attribute, such as harmonizing or aggregating SOC values up to 2003?

Thank you.

**Tags:** models, soil-science


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2024-08-25. Score: 1

If/where you can confirm *without any doubt* that the sites of the legacy samples remain undisturbed by major natural or human changes then it should be safe to use it. Where there's been major land movement like slips, or the sample site has been dug up/paved over etc... then unfortunately you'll need to discard the entry. Unless they're forcefully disrupted mature soils tend to be quite stable over human timescales, treat them no differently than your more modern data points.


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