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GIS UTILITY AND IMPORTANCE IN THE INVENTORY OF SOIL RESOURCES FROM THE PERIMETER OF SECAS, TIMIS COUNTY, ROMANIA, FOR SUSTAINABLE USE

C. Mihuț

Abstract

The paper aims at inventorying soil resources in Secas Commune, Timis County, Romania, using modern means, namely the GIS method, but also to make a cartographic representation of these soil units using modern methods and means. [18,19] The main objectives envisaged are the development of knowledge on the natural environment, the creation of a ?spatial? pedological database, the spatial representation of soils, the qualitative representation of soils by GIS, the inventory of soils and the identification of their spatial position on the basis of pre-existing soil maps, qualitative soil representation through GIS, and the creation of thematic maps of the study area. [20] For the characterization of the studied perimeter, a series of maps were used, namely topographical maps at scale 1: 100 000 and 1:25 000; geological maps at scale 1: 200 000 made available by the Geological Institute of Romania; hydrographic map elaborated by the Banat Water Basin Administration; Soil map of Timis County at 1: 200 000 scale, elaborated by the Office for Pedological and Agrochemical Studies Timisoara in 1992; map of the Secas Commune's soil at 1:10 000 scale, produced by OSPA Timisoara; the administrative-territorial map of Timis County; and data on the soils in the analysed area existing in the Archives of the Office for Pedological and Agrochemical Studies Timisoara (OSPA Timisoara). [21] Based on this map, in the form of a ?cover? layer, the vector mapping of the soils was created through the vectoring process within the ArcGIS 10.0 software. In order to process and analyse data used in the paper, the following software were used: Global Mapper; Photoshop (for assembling scanned images to get unit layouts and their subsequent processing); ArcGIS 10.0, with the help of which databases were developed, various analyses of pedological data that resulted in cartographic representations in vector or raster format (topographical, pedological, thematic maps); Picasa 3; Microsoft Office Word 2007. Secas commune is located in the north-eastern part of Timis County and is bordered to the north by the communes of Sistarovat and Ususeu, to the west by Brestovat Commune, to the south by the Ghizela administrative territory and to the east by the Bara Commune. It is fully included in the Bega River Basin. From a geomorphological point of view, the perimeter studied in the present work overlaps the Lipovei Hills. The relief is characterized by prolonged heights that gradually descend from altitudes of 280 m in the north and northeast of the territory to altitudes of 160 m in the southwest and south-east of the territory or even 120 m in the meadows. The soil map contains 74 soil units, taxonomically framed at subtype level, according to the Romanian Soil Taxonomy System, 2012. For each type of soil, regardless of the number of occurrences on the map, the ArcGIS program automatically calculates the area (Calculated Geometry from the database), making it possible to obtain a situation of the surfaces owned by each of them. As with soil types and subtypes, the area occupied by each soil class can be calculated automatically, thus quickly and accurately obtaining a soil inventory according to the class to which they belong. The importance of this study is materialized in the creation of a vast and complex database that includes all the soil units and their various features, a database that is used to generate cartographic materials that are particularly useful in various analyses or representations.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2019/3.2/s13.077

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