Pedologists Are Key to Scaling through Tools and Knowledge.

Scaling is one of the grand challenges for the soil science discipline. Pedologists are uniquely qualified to address scaling and utilization of soil information to address food security and land degradation issues. Technology that is now available to utilize tacit knowledge understood about soil systems at multiple scales to apply to practical problems. Digital soil mapping tools provide unique methods for representing soil properties at scales from polypedons to watersheds. With paper-based technology, soils were represented as polygons with all soil property information related to the map unit. To answer unique questions, mapping units were related to questions such as yield potential, carbon storage and water storage to name a few. Now, soil properties can be represented as continuous variables and combined in unique ways to design multi-scale maps focused on a specific use. These new technologies and methods are crucial for exprapolating data and information to apply within soil systems.