Terrain Characterization in Support of the SOTER Database Development.

The SOTER project to replace the FAO soil map of the world was initiated in 1986. In the following two decades some progress has been accomplished, but the percentage of the World coverage was far behind the expected. Since the procedure of manuals has been written, a significant development and change in GIS technology, the DSM tools and the digital environmental covariates have become available. The incorporation of these new tools and digital data sources may increase the qualitry of the final SOTER product and speed up the progressto achive the global coverage. The European Commision launched a reserach call to develop a digital soil mapping procedure. Part of this work has concentrated on the terrain characterization to define the terrain units according to the original SOTER mapping scheme. The results of the testing and validating of different terrain parameters will be presented.