Development of portable Soil Information System and its future use in Niigata Prefecture, Japan

Soil is a very important basis for crop production. Today, soil information obtained through a long-term soil monitoring is not only a basis for crop suitability and sustaining soil fertility, but also for advanced land use, environmentally sound agriculture and farm land development. In Japan, many soil survey projects had launched in the 1950s. As a result, assessment of arable soils revealed the status and problems of soils and consequent measure for amendment succeeded soil productivity improvement. Recently, however, the number of soil monitoring sites has decreased conspicuously for several reasons. Continuous soil monitoring is necessary to identify the present soil conditions and to predict a change of soil conditions by different soil management practices. Geographic Information System (GIS) is a promising tool to maximize the utilization of a number of soil information. The author introduces the outlines of the soil survey and monitoring activity in Niigata prefecture and its outcomes. Furthermore, the author shows a new soil survey style with Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and future perspective of the utilization of soil data in Niigata prefecture.