The advantages of Quickbird images for detailed soil survey studies

Soil survey studies are recognized as important sources of information for land use planning and management of a country. Generally soil survey needs more time and higher costs because of changes in soil properties. The main objective of this research was to develop new methods to reduce cost and time consumed during the field work. The study area is located in the northern part of Adana,Turkey. Aerial photos,Quickbird images and Landsat image combinations were used to determine the soil boundaries. After description and sampling of the soil series, 2 sample areas were selected each covering 2,000 ha, and detailed soil survey studies were completed using conventional methods. It was decided that Landsat images were not suitable for this study because mapping scale was not sufficient for the detailed soil survey studies. Survey times were determined for each sample area during the fieldwork. The survey time for Quickbird images were approximately half of the time spent on air photos at the end of the study. Quickbird images provided more advantages as cartographic materials because of their recent date and higher resolution. It was found that the images from Quickbird which have higher resolution are more efficient for detailed soil survey studies.