View article

This chapter describes three mathematically based techniques that have emerged as soil science tools. They are fractals, fuzzy sets, and wavelets, and they are presented in decreasing order of development and application in soil science to date. Fractal geometry can be used to quantitatively describe the shape and irregularity of natural objects by estimating their fractal dimension. The need for using fuzzy set theory in soil quality and land evaluation arises because basic soil information used for the evaluation is described by seemingly vague terms such as “poorly drained”, “slightly susceptible to soil erosion,” and “moderate nutrient availability”. The chapter provides some specific examples relating to soil structure description, modeling soil physical processes, and describing soil spatial variability. It also describes the basic principles of wavelet analysis and illustrates continuous and discrete wavelet transforms …