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Project properties |
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| Title | Analysis of relationships between soil and landscape properties at different measurement scales |
| Group | Soil Geography and Landscape |
| Project type | thesis |
| Credits | 36 |
| Supervisor(s) | G.B.M. Heuvelink, J.J. Stoorvogel |
| Examiner(s) | G.B.M. Heuvelink |
| Contact info | gerard.heuvelink@wur.nl |
| Begin date | 2022/01/03 |
| End date | |
| Description | The soil and landscape are characterized by numerous properties, many of which influence each other. For example, we know that erosion rate depends on slope angle, soil type and vegetation cover and we know that the nitrate concentration of the upper groundwater depends on land use, land management, soil type and infiltration rate. However, we know much less about how the relationships between these properties are influenced by the scale of measurement. For instance, the relationship between aboveground biomass and soil organic matter content in a nature reserve may be very different when comparing samples taken at the scale of 0.1 dm2 than for samples taken at the scale of 1 m2 or 100 m2. The scale dependency is known in geography as the 'areal aggregation problem' or 'modifiable areal units problem'. In ecology, it is called the 'ecological fallacy'. In extreme cases a relationship that is positive at one measurement scale may be negative at another scale. In this MSc thesis research you will quantify and compare the relationship between two soil/landscape properties at multiple measurement scales. You will select a case study and carry out the fieldwork yourself, and will do the laboratory analysis if needed. Most likely the study area will be in the Netherlands, but this does not have to be. Prior to the fieldwork you will define a hypothesis about how the relationship between the properties varies with scale, based on a literature study. |
| Used skills | soil geography, GIS, geostatistics, fieldwork, computer science |
| Requirements | Basics of statistics, geo-information science and soil geography |