Soil types of Aosta Valley (NW-Italy)
Michele D’Amico, Emanuele Pintaldi, E. Sapino, Nicola Colombo, E. Quaglino, Silvia Stanchi, Evelyne Navillod, Raffaele Rocco, Michele Freppaz
Abstract
The first soil map of the whole Aosta Valley Region was produced at the 1:100,000 scale. We used 691 soil profiles, attributed to 16 Cartographic (soil) Units, spatialized using a Maximum Likelihood Estimation model available in ArcGIS software. Six maps were used as base layers, representing the most important soil-forming factors: parent material, vegetation/land use, mean annual precipitation, elevation, absolute aspect and slope angle. The Maximum Likelihood Estimation was followed by an expert-based check that led to a re-assignment of some wrongly attributed cartographic polygons. The validation process revealed that the User’s and Producer’s Accuracies were rather high (between 47.5% and 84.4% for common soil types). A particularly high pedodiversity, associated to strong geological, vegetational and climatic gradients was observed.