Soil bulk density and soil depth from on-site observations in the North-Western Kurdistan region, Iraq

DOI

Soil information is valuable for many disciplines (e.g. agriculture, geomorphology, geology, archaeology) and can be used to produce maps or statistics on soil productivity. As part of the project CRC1070 ResourceCulture, we collected information on the soil quality in the Dohuk province of the Kurdistan region of Iraq. In total, 561 samples were collected at 136 locations in 2017, 2018, 2022, and 2023. These samples were collected at different depth increments (0 - 10, 10 - 30, 30 - 50, 50 - 70 and 70 - 100 cm) with an auger before being prepared and measured with mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy. Part of these samples (109) were selected to be analyzed in a laboratory, measuring texture, pH, organic and total carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, electrical conductivity, bulk density and calcium carbonate. A Cubist model was used to predict the remaining samples based on the MIR spectra. We then modelled digital soil mapping with machine learning methods (ensemble learning, linear regression, decision trees) for these soil components. Additionally, we mapped the soil depth using the information collected in the field. This dataset can help any researcher regarding soil information, forming a unique regional database.The observations in this dataset were made on the field during the 2022 and 2023 campaigns. The depth of the soil was measured until the bedrock or sedimental material (eg. slope deposit, alluvial fan). The Blake and Hartge 1986 method was used during dry sampling for the bulk density in top soil (0 - 5 cm), and units are in g/cm3.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.973714
Related Identifier References https://doi.org/10.2136/sssabookser5.1.2ed.c13
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.973714
Provenance
Creator Bellat, Mathias; Glissmann, Benjamin; Rentschler, Tobias ORCID logo; Sconzo, Paola; Pfälzner, Peter; Brifkany, Bekas; Scholten, Thomas ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2024
Funding Reference German Research Foundation https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001659 Crossref Funder ID 215859406 https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/240000619 A hunt for resources? Spatial models in the ResourceCultures at the northern periphery of Mesopotamia (B07)
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 363 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (42.431W, 36.795S, 43.038E, 37.199N); Dohuk directorate, Iraq
Temporal Coverage Begin 2022-08-14T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2023-10-03T00:00:00Z