Using Legacy Soil Data to Plan New Data Collection: Study Case of Rio de Janeiro State: Brazil

This study aimed to analyze and discuss how the use of legacy soil data and landscape similarity analysis can help in planning the allocation of preferred areas for detailed soil surveys in the scope of the PronaSolos-RJ project. Covariates that represent the soil formation factors were raised for the entire state. These covariates were then used in the in two different dissimilarity index (DI), Gower and ‘area of applicability’ (AOA) in order to evaluate the similarity from different reference areas (legacy soil survey) and legacy soil data respectively. The territory of Rio Janeiro is not satisfactorily covered by pedological maps at scales and levels of detail to meet current and future demands. The reference area approach to representing a region through the Gower index similarity or AOA analysis can save time, money, and personnel resources. This methodology can be applied to the entire national territory in order to optimize resources of the National Soil Program in Brazil. The decision makers are free to use one of the methodologies or use them in a complementary way.