Soil survey to characterize 2 sentinel sites (CIAT)

The Land Degradation Surveillance Framework (LDSF) used by AfSIS was employed to conduct a systematic biophysical assessment of various ecological and soil health metrics. The LDSF was based on a hierarchical spatially stratified, random sampling approach consisting of 100 km2 sentinel landscapes, which were statistically representative of the variability in climate, topography and vegetation of the study area under consideration. To predict soil properties for areas where samples were not collected, relatively large number of samples from representative locations were taken. To overcome the huge cost of analyzing large soil samples using conventional laboratory techniques, near and mid-infrared spectroscopy approaches were used.