Preparation of DSSAT Soil Input Data Using Soil Information System in Korea.

Spatial projection of crop yield or suitable area under a given climate condition would help policy makers to prepare climate change adaptation measures. Crop growth models including the Decision support system for agrotechnology transfer (DSSAT) has been used to estimate crop yield at specific site or a region of interest. Although soil input data are required for the study area for spatial estimation of crop yield, few tools have been developed to prepare the soil data in a region. The objective of this study was to prepare soil input data at very high spatial resolution in Korea. At first, maps of soil series were downloaded from the soil information system operated by Rural Development Administration (http://soil.rda.go.kr). The spatial resolution of those soil series maps was 30 m. The soil series maps were merged to create a NetCDF file. The unique soil series names were obtained using R. In total, about 1200 soil series were identified. The tool, which is called SolDownloder, was implemented in java to access the soil information system, to download data for physical and chemical properties of a given soil series, and to prepare a SOL file, which is a soil information database used by the DSSAT. The SOL file created for Korea could be used at a specific site when the soil series at the given site is identified. When the DSSAT become compatible with gridded soil input data, the SOL file could also be used to provide soil input data.