User-oriented Concepts to Assess the Accuracy of Nationwide Land Quality Maps

摘要

For a study area in Northern Germany the accuracy of groundwater recharge maps at different scales was assessed. In a second step, possible improvements by applying different upscaling procedures on soil data were compared and evaluated. At the 1 : 1,000,000 scale about 75 % of the error is caused by soil spatial variability; the remaining 25 % indicate at what degree uncertainty is caused by the mapping or upscaling procedure and can be eliminated to produce "best possible maps". Furthermore, several measures to quantify soil spatial variability within mapping units of the 1 : 200,000 and 1 : 1,000,000 scale were compared. Using these results, legend units of a small-scale soil map can then be grouped or classified and a qualitative information about the expected degree of accuracy can be given to users such as politicians and decision-makers.