Paper short abstract:

Humanity has become a more dominant force influencing the pedosphere than its natural counterparts in the Anthropocene. The integration of human factors in digital soil mapping can promote our understanding of human-soil interaction, which is essential for sustainable management of land resource.

Paper long abstract:

In the Anthropocene, humanity has become a more dominant force influencing the pedosphere than its natural counterparts, especially in the areas with rapid economic development and land-use change. Understanding the human-soil interaction could thus be vital for policymakers not only in the agriculture sector but also in the field of watershed management and spatial planning. With the aim to comprehensively quantify the spatial dynamics of soil properties and their scale-dependent relationship with surrounding environment, we propose to include human factors as a predictive SCORPAN factor in the soil-landscape modeling. We illustrate our ideas with two case studies in China and demonstrate the arts of soil cartography using combined satellite remote sensing images and geospatial data analysis and mapping. We highlight that better soil mapping means better and easier understanding of human-soil interaction, which is essential for sustainable management of land resource.