Just have been diving into the different GIS (Geo Information Systems) and checking what data is already available. Of course Swiss style, each canton has it’s own GIS and different kinda data are being monitored.
Seems like in the Canton of Schaffhausen there is not so much about soil available yet. but some other interesting data of forest use. http://www.sh.ch/index.php?id=663
The GIS Portal of Zurich though shows an almost complete map of soil properties of all agricultural land (not natural reserves, urban environments or forests) http://maps.zh.ch/
Interesting is that the “Biological Activity” is only one small aspect that is being recorded and classified on 4 categories (high, normal, little, very little).
I’ll throw another one in here. https://soilgrids.org/ is a great website which takes the local soil data from different regions (probably including the one linked above) and makes them all available and accessible through their nice online map AND (more importantly) through a sanely designed API - https://rest.soilgrids.org/ . If you click on a point on the map, it even shows you the API URL directly in the info menu (!!).
We have a great US based soil map from USGS which has been built over the course of the last 100 years, but it’s nearly impossible to use because the API is so f-ing complicated.
Also, I just noticed that Soilgrids is now testing a beta feature for uploading data… that’s cool! I’ll check that out also.
Let’s have also a look at LASER SCANNING TECHNICS!
A Laser Scanner is a very complex instrument and is resulting from of a very long history…
…probably not in the range of DIY: might a provocation to say that… but let’s see.
What is intersting to observe on the field of use of the laser scanners, that it is not only useful for the building and landscape industry but as well to observ the forest and messure CO2!
so much so short,
It’s meant to be a collection of a list of links to the soil geeking topic and an input to the discussion.
Might there is contrary potential to look at and pick inspiration.
for geology mapping (and generally, for a cool website), check out https://macrostrat.org/burwell/ made by my friends (and former colleagues) at the University of Wisconsin. Many years ago (in 2011), I made its predecessor Earthbase (now offline as Macrostrat, while based on Earthbase, is much better)
Kinect (xbox360)