A land evaluation decision support system (MicroLEIS DSS) for agricultural soil protection: With special reference to the Mediterranean region
Introduction
Soils can be used for almost all agricultural purposes if sufficient inputs are supplied. The application of inputs can be such that they dominate the conditions in which crops are grown, as can be the case in greenhouse cultivation. However, each soil unit has its own potentialities and limitations, and each soil use its own biophysical requirements. External inputs or improvements are expressed in terms of capital, energy, or environmental costs. A main aim of soil protection is to minimize these socio-economic and environmental costs by predicting the inherent capacity of a soil unit to support a specific soil use and management for a long period of time without deterioration. Soil protection requires the improvement of agricultural soil use, its planning, and its management.
Sustainable soil use and management must sustain biophysical soil potentiality and, at the same time, diversify the agricultural soil system, considering all the possible options to increase crop production: (i) expansion of the agricultural land surface; (ii) introduction of improved crop varieties; (iii) use of irrigation techniques; (iv) application of fertilizers and pesticides; and (v) rationalization of soil tillage practices (Robert et al., 1993). In brief, in the design of sustainable agro-ecosystems for soil protection, the challenge for the near future will be to increase the crop production on less land, and with less labor, water, and pesticides.
Agro-ecological land evaluation analysis, such as the assessment of land performance (land suitability and land vulnerability) when used for specified purposes, provides a rational basis for sustainable soil use and management (Dent and Young, 1981). According to the new concept of soil quality (Karlen et al., 1997), land evaluation is not the same as soil quality assessment, basically because the biological parameters of the soil are not considered in land evaluation. However, biological attributes or indicators (e.g. microbial biomass and/or respiration, mycorrhizal association, nematode communities, enzymes, and detailed characterization of organic matter) are very dynamic and exceptionally sensitive to changes in soil conditions. They appear to be very responsive to different agricultural soil conservation and management practices, such as non-tillage, organic amendments, and crop rotation.
For soil quality assessment, the development of relationships between all the soil quality indicators and the soil functions may be a monumental task. Therefore, land evaluation analysis may serve as a first step towards developing a soil physical/chemical quality assessment procedure. A short-term evaluation or monitoring procedure can then be considered mainly for the soil biological quality.
Emerging technology in data and knowledge engineering provides excellent possibilities in land evaluation development and application processes. The application phase of land evaluation systems is a process of scaling-up from the representative areas of the development phase to implementation in unknown scenarios. The application phase—previously accomplished manually—can now be executed with computer-assisted procedures. This involves the development and linkage of integrated databases, computer programs, and spatialization tools, constituting decision support systems (De la Rosa and Van Diepen, 2002).
Decision support systems are computerized technology that can be used to support complex decision-making and problem-solving (Shim et al., 2002). Opinions are wide-ranging as to what constitutes a decision support system. A database management system could arguably be used as a decision support system for certain applications. Many people consider geographic information systems very useful decision support systems (Booty et al., 2001). Classic decision support system design comprise components for (i) sophisticated database management capabilities with access to internal and external data, information, and knowledge, (ii) powerful modeling functions accessed by a model management system, and (iii) simple user interface designs that enable interactive queries, reporting, and graphing functions (Shim et al., 2002).
The evolution of the MicroLEIS (Mediterranean Land Evaluation Information System) follows the three eras of growth in the computer industry: (i) the data processing era, (ii) the microcomputer era, and (iii) the network era. During the first era, some qualitative and statistical land evaluation models were developed. The first microcomputer-based results were in the DOS environment in the early 1990s (De la Rosa et al., 1992), and then moved to WINDOWS in the late 1990s. Since 1998, the MicroLEIS system has also been considered well-suited to take advantage of the opportunities that the Internet presents, especially the rapid dissemination of information and knowledge, making the system more efficient and more widely used. All the main components of this Web-based decision support system—software (for PC platforms, Web development and GIS spatialization), documentation (about 1000 pages, in HTML and PDF formats), and information (Andalusia region data/photos); along with other Internet facilities, such as search engine, register module, and directory of users—are available free of charge from the URL www.microles.com. All the Internet features of MicroLEIS are in both English and Spanish.
In this paper, the approaches used and experience gained in the development of the MicroLEIS DSS project are discussed. Emphasis is given to the achievements made in passing from a land evaluation system to a land resources information system, and in the beginnings of a land evaluation decision support system. It has to be pointed out, however, that MicroLEIS DSS is an open project under continuous development.
Section snippets
Basic data warehousing
The MicroLEIS DSS system was developed to assist specific types of decision-makers faced with specific agro-ecological problems. It has been designed as a knowledge-based approach which incorporates a set of information tools, as illustrated in Fig. 1. Each of these tools is directly linked to another, and custom applications can be carried out on a wide range of problems related to land productivity and land degradation. They are grouped into the following main modules: i) basic data
Land evaluation modeling
In the MicroLEIS DSS system, land evaluation analysis focuses on agricultural land use, planning, and management for soil protection purposes. Other land evaluation studies focus on land productivity through the crop system modeling (e.g. Jones et al., 2003). Table 2 shows a list of the MicroLEIS DSS models in two sets corresponding to (i) a land suitability approach, and (ii) a land vulnerability approach. According to Rossiter (1996), all these models are non-spatial single-area models—they
Model application software
The possibilities for exploitation of land evaluation models in decision-making by developing the model application software or generalization phase are enormous. This phase will make possible the practical use of the information and knowledge gained during the prior phase of building evaluation models (Antoine, 1994).
Since the beginning of the MicroLEIS project, the emphasis has been on developing the model application software. Three versions were developed for each of the MicroLEIS DSS
User applications
The MicroLEIS DSS system focuses on soil protection by improving agricultural soil use, its planning, and its management. Soil use planning is derived mainly from the application results of the land suitability-related models, and soil use management from the land vulnerability-related results. The first group can include identification of areas with specific bioclimatic deficiencies, and soil and terrain limitations for agricultural use (Terraza and Cervatana models); selection of forest
Concluding comments
With a modular framework such as that used in the MicroLEIS decision support system, the components can be easily used as required for a particular application. For each application, the selection of the most appropriate model, along with the collection of all key information on the sources, may constitute most of the effort. Due to the wide range of data types required for most of the models, the use of the databases—particularly SDBm Plus for soil data—is normally the initial step of any
Acknowledgements
The MicroLEIS decision support system has been developed, during the past 14 years, mainly by the authors of this paper, with the collaboration of many contributing and former authors who are listed on the website. The input of all of these is acknowledged with gratitude. Thanks are also expressed to J. Ruiz, J.A. Moreno, and A. Rosales for their active participation in this project. This work was funded by several international projects: SDBm FAO project, 1990–2001 (various Letters of
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The MicroLEIS decision support system is available free of charge from the Internet site: http://www.microleis.com. MicroLEIS DSS software and user manual can also be obtained on CD-ROM from the corresponding author.