Environmental changes in biodiversity hotspot ecosystems of
South Ecuador: RESPonse and feedback effECTs (FOR2730)

Abstract:

A digital soil mapping approach is applied to a complex, mountainous terrain in the Ecuadorian Andes. Relief features are derived from a digital elevation model and used as predictors for topsoil texture classes sand, silt, and clay. The performance of three statistical learning methods is compared: linear regression, random forest, and stochastic gradient boosting of regression trees. In linear regression, a stepwise backward variable selection procedure is applied and overfitting is controlled by minimizing Mallow’s Cp. For random forest and boosting, the effect of predictor selection and tuning procedures is assessed. 100-fold repetitions of a 5-fold cross-validation of the selected modelling procedures are employed for validation, uncertainty assessment, and method comparison. Absolute assessment of model performance is achieved by comparing the prediction error of the selected method and the mean. Boosting performs best, providing predictions that are reliably better than the mean. The median reduction of the root mean square error is around 5%. Elevation is the most important predictor. All models clearly distinguish ridges and slopes. The predicted texture patterns are interpreted as result of catena sequences (eluviation of fine particles on slope shoulders) and landslides (mixing up mineral soil horizons on slopes).

Abstract:

The sloping mire landscape of the investigation area, in the southern Andes of Ecuador, is dominated by stagnic soils with thick organic layers. The recursive partitioning algorithm Random Forest was used to predict the spatial water stagnation pattern and the thickness of the organic layer from terrain attributes. Terrain smoothing from 10 to 30m raster resolution was applied in order to obtain the best possible model. For the same purpose, several model tuning parameters were tested and a prepredictor selection with the R-package Boruta was applied. Model versions were evaluated and compared by 100 repetitions of the calculation of the residual mean square error of a five-fold cross-validation. Position specific density functions of the predicted soil parameters were then used to display prediction uncertainty. Prepredictor selection and tuning of the Random Forest algorithm in some cases resulted in an improved model performance.We therefore recommend testing prepredictor selection and tuning to make sure that the best possible model is chosen.This needs particular emphasis in complex tropical mountain soil-landscapes which provide a real challenge to any soil mapping approach but where Random Forest has proven to be successful due to the testing of model tuning and prepredictor selection.