Digital Soil Assessment: Guiding Landscape-Scale Forest Management and Restoration in Central Appalachia.

Soil maps are, by the nature of the soil survey institutions that create them, used to guide decision making regarding land use and management. This was true when the maps were made using aerial photos and topographic maps to interpret soil-landscape relationships, and it is true today when multispectral sensors and digital elevation models are used. Advances in data processing capacity, increased availability of proximal and remote sensing products, and development of statistical modeling and machine learning approaches has fostered significant advances in soil mapping in the digital realm. Simultaneously, recognition of the limitations of conventional soil maps despite the growing understanding of the importance of soils for addressing various global issues has driven soil scientists to advance beyond digital soil mapping to digital soil assessment as a means to better address questions of food and water security, climate change adaption, and other critical soil ecosystem services. We will describe our efforts to map various soil properties in forested (and non-forested) landscapes to improve soil and ecological site inventory and, consequently, inform decisions regarding habitat restoration and carbon management. Examples will include development of (i) maps of soil organic C stocks across the Eastern Allegheny Plateau and Mountains, which are being used by the Forest Service to guide land management strategic planning to address climate change adaption on the Monongahela National Forest; and (ii) maps of spodic soil properties, which are being used to inform and guide red spruce restoration in the Central Appalachians.