5 OSSL reference models
You are reading the work-in-progress of the SoilSpec4GG manual. This chapter is currently draft version, a peer-review publication is pending.
We have received important feedback from people that said the current models are doing a great job, but for others not that much. This can be due to the specific soil types not being well represented or due to the spectra not being well aligned with the OSSL. We plan to conduct a systematic analysis of learning algorithms, global vs local fitting, compression methods and preprocessing using the OSSL database. Another great interest is to test if including spatial covariates or fusing different spectral regions really help to deliver more reliable predictions.
The following sections describe steps used to produce OSSL models, which are used in the OSSL prediction service and API. The current available models were fitted using the previous OSSL database version 1.0. For more in-depth insight of the modeling steps please refer to the ossl-models repository.
5.1 OSSL global soil spectroscopy callibrarion models
We have fitted a number of calibration models using OSSL MIR and VisNIR spectra and combination of additional covariates, and which are now publicly available for use under the CC-BY license. For modeling we use the Ensemble Machine Learning framework as implemented in the R mlr programming environment with the following parameters:
- Regression on first 60 Principal Component Analysis PC’s of the raw spectra;
- Four base learners: Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, Cubist and Lasso and Elastic-Net Regularized GLM;
- Ensemble Machine Learning by stacking / meta-learner through 5-fold Cross-Validation;
- Blocking using 100×100-km spatial grid to avoid possible overfitting;
- Feature selection and model-parameter fine-tuning using random and sequential backward search;
For more details on how were the models fitted refer to: https://github.com/soilspectroscopy/ossl-models.
For standard global soil spectral calibration models we use various calibration frameworks including:
- Using only MIR spectra for calibration.
- Using only VisNIR spectra for calibration.
- Using combination of MIR and VisNIR spectra.
- Using combination of MIR and VisNIR spectra + geographic covariates.
The methods 1 & 2 are standard methods described in literature (Wadoux et al., 2021). The methods 3 & 4 are referred to as the “MIR-VisNIR fusion” approach (Vohland, Ludwig, Seidel, & Hutengs, 2022). The method 4 is the “field-specific calibration approach”; we refer to it here as the “bundle approach” as we basically use all information available to help produce best predictions of targeted soil properties.
Users can choose to opt for one of the multiple calibration models, which also depends on the type of data (VisNIR, MIR, coordinates and depths known yes/no) used of course. The online callibration service (https://engine.soilspectroscopy.org) and the API can be used for predicting values of soil properties for smaller datasets (<1000 rows).
Soil spectral scans obtained by different spectroscopic instruments often cannot be modeled or analyzed together i.e. they require some kind of calibration (Lei & Sun, 2022) before one can fit cross-instrument / cross-dataset calibration models. In the OSSL library we thus use also instrument / dataset code as the indicator variable. The most complex models currently in the OSSL are, thus, one with which users need to define both:
- Input MIR spectra,
- Input VisNIR spectra (same samples),
- Geographical location and soil depth,
- Instrument code / dataset code;
5.2 Using default OSSL models to predict soil properties
OSSL model registry (RDS) S3 file services currently includes large number of prediction models fitted for a list of soil properties. The complete list is available in the file OSSL_models_meta.csv.
5.2.1 Predicting soil properties using MIR spectra
For example, to predict soil organic carbon weight percent (oc_usda.calc_wpct) using MIR spectra, we need to load
two models (1) principal component model mpca_mir_kssl_v1.rds,
(2) mlr model for predicting oc_usda.calc_wpct:
source('./R/ossl_functions.R')
rep = "http://s3.us-east-1.wasabisys.com/soilspectroscopy/ossl_models/"
pcm1 = url(paste0(rep, "pca.ossl/mpca_mir_kssl_v1.rds"), "rb")
eml1 = url(paste0(rep, "log..oc_usda.calc_wpct/mir_mlr..eml_kssl_na_v1.rds"), "rb")
ossl.pca.mir = readRDS(pcm1)
ossl.model = readRDS(eml1)Note that the models (RDS files) can be between 10 to 200 MB in size, depending on complexity of models and the size of the training data used.
The Principal Component Analysis is described in the OSSL models repository. It is a standard way of compressing 1000+ spectral bands before predictive modeling (Chang, Laird, Mausbach, & Hurburgh Jr, 2001). We use the first 60 PCA components for further modeling, which is an arbitrary decisions.
We can look at the summary of model by typing:
summary(ossl.model$learner.model$super.model$learner.model)Residuals:
Min 1Q Median 3Q Max
-3.4601 -0.0535 -0.0038 0.0442 3.2730
Coefficients:
Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
(Intercept) -0.0099587 0.0008464 -11.766 < 2e-16 ***
regr.ranger 0.1507935 0.0048442 31.129 < 2e-16 ***
regr.xgboost -0.0231490 0.0034214 -6.766 1.34e-11 ***
regr.cvglmnet 0.4153936 0.0049604 83.742 < 2e-16 ***
regr.cubist 0.4674533 0.0044788 104.371 < 2e-16 ***
---
Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1
Residual standard error: 0.1501 on 72246 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared: 0.9776, Adjusted R-squared: 0.9776
F-statistic: 7.891e+05 on 4 and 72246 DF, p-value: < 2.2e-16This shows that the model is an ensemble Machine Learning model based on stacking of
four individual models: regr.ranger (Random Forest) (Wright & Ziegler, 2017), regr.xgboost (Gradient Boosting) (Chen et al., 2015),
regr.cvglmnet (Lasso and Elastic-Net Regularized GLM) (Friedman, Hastie, & Tibshirani, 2010) and regr.cubist (Cubist) (Kuhn, Weston, Keefer, & Coulter, 2012). The RMSE
of the model is 0.150 (R-square = 0.978), based on 5-fold Cross Validation with spatial blocking (global grid with 100 km blocks).
Model is based on 72,246 training points.
We can take a look at the accuracy plot for this model:
Figure 5.1: Accuracy plot for log..oc_usda.calc_wpct/mir_mlr..eml_kssl_na_v1.rds.
Next, we load the sample MIR data that we can use to predict soil organic carbon:
mir.raw = read.csv("./sample-data/sample_mir_data.csv")[,-1]This is a simple table with raw MIR spectral data (absorbances) prepared as a table. The column names contain the wavelengths / MIR channels:
'data.frame': 20 obs. of 10 variables:
$ X4001.656: num 0.411 0.357 0.296 0.152 0.238 ...
$ X3999.728: num 0.411 0.357 0.297 0.152 0.239 ...
$ X3997.799: num 0.411 0.357 0.297 0.153 0.239 ...
$ X3995.871: num 0.411 0.357 0.298 0.153 0.24 ...
$ X3993.942: num 0.411 0.357 0.298 0.153 0.24 ...
$ X3992.014: num 0.411 0.357 0.299 0.154 0.241 ...
$ X3990.085: num 0.411 0.358 0.299 0.154 0.242 ...
$ X3988.156: num 0.412 0.358 0.299 0.154 0.242 ...
$ X3986.228: num 0.412 0.358 0.3 0.154 0.243 ...
$ X3984.3 : num 0.411 0.358 0.3 0.155 0.243 ...We can generate predictions by using:
pred.oc = predict.ossl(t.var="log..oc_usda.calc_wpct", mir.raw=mir.raw,
ossl.model=ossl.model, ylim=c(0,100),
ossl.pca.mir=ossl.pca.mir)
str(pred.oc$pred)where ylim=c(0,100) specifies that the prediction values need to be in the range 0 to 100 (values out of these range will be replaced with either 0 or 100).
The output of this model consists of four parts:
List of 4
$ pred :'data.frame': 20 obs. of 5 variables:
$ x :'data.frame': 20 obs. of 68 variables:
$ model:'data.frame': 72251 obs. of 5 variables:
$ cf : num 1.38- Predictions with back-transformed value and lower and upper prediction intervals (1 std.);
- Data frame with all covariate layers needed to generate predictions;
- Summary meta-learner with predicted and observed values;
- Ratio between variance in predictions produced using base learners and MSE;
The predictions are in the format:
str(pred.oc$pred)'data.frame': 20 obs. of 5 variables:
$ pred.mean : num 0.0496 0.1128 0.3848 0.776 -0.0608 ...
$ pred.error: num 0.115 0.248 0.085 0.151 0.168 ...
$ tpred.mean: num 0.0509 0.1194 0.4693 1.1728 0 ...
$ lower.1std: num 0 0 0.35 0.868 0 ...
$ upper.1std: num 0.179 0.435 0.6 1.527 0.113 ...which means that the predicted oc_usda.calc_wpct for first row is 0 etc. The
lower.1std and upper.1std indicate standard prediction interval based on the
prediction error derived in the log-space. For higher values of oc_usda.calc_wpct
prediction interval gets thus proportionally higher for larger absolute values e.g. for row 14 it is between 24% and 39%:
#pred.oc$pred[14,]
pred.mean pred.error tpred.mean lower.1std upper.1std
14 3.464914 0.2329579 30.9737 24.32914 39.3613Finally, we can check how well does the new data (MIR scans) reflect the training data used to build the calibration models:
library(hexbin)
library(grid)
ossl.pcax.mir = readRDS(url(paste0(rep, "pca.ossl/pca_mir_kssl_v1.rds"), "rb"))
reds = colorRampPalette(RColorBrewer::brewer.pal(9, "YlOrRd")[-1])
hb <- hexbin(ossl.pcax.mir$x[,1:2], xbins=60)
p <- plot(hb, colramp = reds, main='PCA MIR KSSL')
pushHexport(p$plot.vp)
grid.points(pred.oc$x$mir.PC1, pred.oc$x$mir.PC2, pch=17)
Figure 5.2: Similary plot new spectra vs training spectra (PC biplot).
Based on the plot shown above, it appears that some of scans used are less typical and hence prediction results should be taken with caution.
5.2.2 Predicting soil properties using MIR spectra and geographical covariates
Next, we can also predict values at new location using calibration model that is field-specific i.e. we use MIR spectra in combination with geographic covariates. To predict with such data we also need to load geographical locations for the same MIR scans:
new.soil = read.csv("./sample-data/sample_soilsite_data.csv")
lon = new.soil$longitude.std.decimal.degrees
lat = new.soil$latitude.std.decimal.degrees
hzn_depth = new.soil$lay_depth_to_top + (new.soil$lay_depth_to_bottom - new.soil$lay_depth_to_top)/2This now comes with three additional columns lon and lat and soil depth hzn_depth, which is
the middle of the top and bottom depth of the soil horizon. To predict with then specify also the additional
arguments in the function:
eml2 = url(paste0(rep, "log..oc_usda.calc_wpct/mir_mlr..eml_kssl_ll_v1.rds"), "rb")
ossl.model = readRDS(eml2)
pred.oc2 = predict.ossl(t.var="log..oc_usda.calc_wpct", mir.raw=mir.raw, ossl.model=ossl.model, ylim=c(0,100),
ossl.pca.mir=ossl.pca.mir, geo.type="ll", lon=lon, lat=lat, hzn_depth=hzn_depth, cog.dir="/data/WORLDCLIM/")This type of prediction is somewhat more complex as the function predict.ossl needs also to overlay
points (lon and lat) vs some 60+ GeoTIFFs (containing WorldClim2.1 layers and MODIS LST layers). In this case the layers are located on a local machine, which significantly speeds up predictions function.
We can look at the variable importance table to try to understand how much the additional geographical covariate layers help with producing predictions:
xl <- data.frame(importance = ossl.model$learner.model$base.models[[1]]$learner.model$variable.importance)
xl$relative_importance = 100*xl$importance/sum(xl$importance)
xl = xl[order(xl$importance, decreasing = TRUE),]
xl[1:20,] importance relative_importance
mir.PC3 6511.36634 27.9140468
mir.PC2 3603.29854 15.4472409
hzn_depth 2936.76269 12.5898202
mir.PC5 2570.81057 11.0209936
mir.PC10 1767.58676 7.5775954
mir.PC1 1276.53105 5.4724532
mir.PC4 925.96202 3.9695735
mir.PC11 416.65775 1.7862002
mir.PC24 226.11697 0.9693572
mir.PC26 158.90309 0.6812131
mir.PC8 116.63143 0.4999957
mir.PC16 102.35918 0.4388110
mir.PC7 98.52643 0.4223801
clm_lst_mod11a2.jul.day_m_1km_s0..0cm_2000..2017_v1.0 65.31996 0.2800248
mir.PC12 62.31378 0.2671374
mir.PC28 60.13722 0.2578066
mir.PC15 59.47144 0.2549524
clm_lst_mod11a2.jun.day_m_1km_s0..0cm_2000..2017_v1.0 59.17326 0.2536741
mir.PC6 49.88579 0.2138590
mir.PC17 49.37638 0.2116752here hzn_depth comes as an important covariate and so is lst_mod11a2.jul.day
(MOD11A long-term meand daily temperature for July). The original MIR PCA components, however,
dominate the prediction model.
The global layers (global land mask at 1-km spatial resolution) are listed at https://github.com/soilspectroscopy/ossl-models and are available as a Cloud-service / Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFFs. The process of spatial overlay for new prediction locations, however, can significantly increase prediction time, so something to be aware of.
5.2.3 Predicting soil properties using VisNIR spectra
We can also load VisNIR spectra (reflectances) and predict values using the same function:
'data.frame': 20 obs. of 5 variables:
$ X350: num 0.0855 0.0677 0.2319 0.3179 0.25 ...
$ X351: num 0.0839 0.0666 0.2305 0.3195 0.2504 ...
$ X352: num 0.0816 0.0647 0.2277 0.3184 0.2508 ...
$ X353: num 0.0811 0.0658 0.2261 0.3134 0.2489 ...
$ X354: num 0.082 0.0674 0.2258 0.3124 0.2464 ...We load another PCA model that we prepared using global VisNIR data and the mlr-model that was fitted using VisNIR data:
pmc3 = url(paste0(rep, "pca.ossl/mpca_visnir_kssl_v1.rds"), "rb")
eml3 = url(paste0(rep, "log..oc_usda.calc_wpct/visnir_mlr..eml_ossl_na_v1.rds"), "rb")
ossl.pca.visnir = readRDS(pmc3)
ossl.model = readRDS(eml3)
pred.oc3 = predict.ossl(t.var="log..oc_usda.calc_wpct", visnir.raw=visnir.raw, ossl.model=ossl.model,
ylim=c(0,100), spc.type = "visnir", ossl.pca.visnir = ossl.pca.visnir)This model is similar to the MIR model, but the accuracy plot indicates that the accuracy might be significantly lower:
Figure 5.3: Accuracy plot for log..oc_usda.calc_wpct/visnir_mlr..eml_ossl_na_v1.rds.
5.2.4 Importing soil spectral scans using raw data formats
The examples shown above demonstrate prediction results based on using sample MIR and VisNIR data (csv files). If you only have raw spectral scan data such as ASD (PAN Analytics Inc.) and/or OPUS files (Bruker Inc.), you can use various R packages to read files and prepare them for prediction required by OSSL.
Consider for example a sample OPUS file from the AfSIS-1 project, which is an original file from the Bruker_Alpha_ZnSe instrument. We can read this file thanks to the simplerspec package by using:
mir.x = simplerspec::read_opus_bin_univ('sample-data/icr056141.0')
#> Extracted spectra data from file: <icr056141.0>
names(mir.x)
#> [1] "metadata" "spc" "spc_nocomp"
#> [4] "sc_sm" "sc_rf" "ig_sm"
#> [7] "ig_rf" "wavenumbers" "wavenumbers_sc_sm"
#> [10] "wavenumbers_sc_rf"which gives a list of object including spc which are the spectral bands:
dim(mir.x[["spc"]])
#> [1] 1 1715we can plot the MIR absorbance curve for this scan by using:
x = as.numeric(names(mir.x[["spc"]]))
matplot(y=as.vector(t(mir.x[["spc"]])), x=x,
ylim = c(0,3),
type = 'l',
xlab = "Wavelength",
ylab = "Absorbance"
)
Figure 5.4: Spectral absorbances plot using MIR data.
This dataset is hence ready to generate predictions using global OSSL models. We can, for example generate prediction of soil pH using the following model:
Figure 5.5: Accuracy plot for log..oc_usda.calc_wpct/mir_mlr..eml_ossl_ll_v1.rds.
in this case we need to add also lon-lat coordinates and specify the soil depth:
pcm3 = url(paste0(rep, "pca.ossl/mpca_mir_ossl_v1.rds"), "rb")
eml3 = url(paste0(rep, "log..oc_usda.calc_wpct/mir_mlr..eml_ossl_ll_v1.rds"), "rb")
ossl.pca.mir = readRDS(pcm3)
ossl.model = readRDS(eml3)
pred.oc1 = predict.ossl(t.var="log..oc_usda.calc_wpct", mir.raw=mir.x[["spc"]], ossl.model=ossl.model,
ossl.pca.mir=ossl.pca.mir, geo.type="ll", lon=28.50299833, lat=-13.10194667, hzn_depth=10,
cog.dir="/data/WORLDCLIM/", dataset.code_ascii_c="AFSIS1.SSL", ylim=c(0,100))which gives us predictions of log..oc_usda.calc_wpct:
pred.oc1$pred pred.mean pred.error tpred.mean lower.1std upper.1std
1 -0.02636144 0.2813155 0 0 0.2904023Note that we had to now specify that this MIR data is from AfSIS project via the
AFSIS1.SSL argument.
Likewise, we can also read the ASD files using the asdreader package, so we can generate predictions using VisNIR spectra. Consider for example the sample data from the KSSL VisNIR repository:
asd.raw = as.data.frame(asdreader::get_spectra("sample-data/101453MD01.asd"))
dim(asd.raw)
#> [1] 1 2151
x = as.numeric(names(asd.raw))
matplot(y=as.vector(t(asd.raw)), x=x,
ylim = c(0,0.7),
type = 'l',
xlab = "Wavelength",
ylab = "Reflectance"
)
Figure 5.6: Spectral reflectance plot using VisNIR data.
we can also directly predict ph.h2o_usda.4c1_index by using:
pmc3 = url(paste0(rep, "pca.ossl/mpca_visnir_kssl_v1.rds"), "rb")
eml4 = url(paste0(rep, "ph.h2o_usda.4c1_index/visnir_mlr..eml_ossl_na_v1.rds"), "rb")
ossl.pca.visnir = readRDS(pmc3)
ossl.model = readRDS(eml4)
pred.ph2 = predict.ossl(t.var="ph.h2o_usda.4c1_index", visnir.raw=asd.raw,
ossl.model=ossl.model, spc.type="visnir", ossl.pca.visnir=ossl.pca.visnir)
pred.ph2$pred pred.mean pred.error lower.1std upper.1std
1 6.292328 0.9341607 5.358167 7.226489We are currently building an API that will work directly with standard raw files coming directly from the instruments. This should help make the OSSL more robust and applicable to thousands of requests on a daily basis.
Wrongly formatted spectral scans can lead to artifacts and should be used with care. Note that complexity of soil spectral scans remains high, including the file sizes that are difficult to open and read (few thousands of columns) and are often not supported in standard tabular software e.g. LibreOffice or similar. We recommend thus to report any issues you might have via our project GitHub so we can all help each other produce more accurate primary soil data.
5.2.5 The bundle approach to soil spectroscopy calibration
One of the approaches used to calibrate soil spectroscopy data in the Soil Spectroscopy for Global Good project is to use a combination of VisNIR, MIR, spatial location and Earth Observation data, basically any additional information that could potentially help with calibration. We refer to this as the “bundle approach”. The key assumption of the bundle approach is that accuracy of predictions could be somewhat improved, which is especially important for soil organic carbon monitoring and similar. Some previous research e.g. by Hong et al. (2022) and Vohland et al. (2022) indicate that such fusion techniques could help improve accuracy of, especially, in-situ methods.
Because several of the training data sets, especially the KSSL and ICRAF-ISRIC,
come with both VisNIR and MIR scans, and are documented in detail, we were able
to fit global calibration models that can now be used to predict soil properties from a combination of data.
Consider for example a sample from North Dakota with a profile code S2014ND095001, and
sample code 235157 (classified as “Fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, frigid Calcic Hapludoll”).
This sample was taken at location lon=-99.2064444; lat=48.8000056; and covers
the depth interval 101–125 cm (B2 horizon). We can predict value of soil pH by
using both VisNIR and MIR scans for the same sample:
mir.x = simplerspec::read_opus_bin_univ('sample-data/235157XS01.0')
#> Extracted spectra data from file: <235157XS01.0>
asd.raw = as.data.frame(asdreader::get_spectra("sample-data/235157MD01.asd"))This time we need to load 2 PCA models (1) for VisNIR and (2) MIR spectra, and one
model for the bundle calibration visnir.mir_mlr..eml_ossl_na_v1.rds:
To make the prediction, we need to specify multiple inputs:
pcm.m = url(paste0(rep, "pca.ossl/mpca_mir_ossl_v1.rds"), "rb")
pcm.v = url(paste0(rep, "pca.ossl/mpca_visnir_ossl_v1.rds"), "rb")
eml.b = url(paste0(rep, "log..oc_usda.calc_wpct/visnir.mir_mlr..eml_ossl_na_v1.rds"), "rb")
ossl.pca.mir = readRDS(pcm.m)
ossl.pca.visnir = readRDS(pcm.v)
ossl.model = readRDS(eml.b)
pred.ph.b = predict.ossl(t.var="log..oc_usda.calc_wpct", spc.type="visnir.mir",
mir.raw=mir.x[["spc"]], visnir.raw=asd.raw,
ossl.model=ossl.model, ossl.pca.mir=ossl.pca.mir,
ossl.pca.visnir=ossl.pca.visnir, hzn_depth=113)which gives:
pred.ph.b$pred pred.mean pred.error tpred.mean lower.1std upper.1std
1 0.2532955 0.02471756 0.2882639 0.2568115 0.3205034We can look at the model prediction accuracy based on 5-fold cross-validation:
Residuals:
Min 1Q Median 3Q Max
-3.1514 -0.0625 -0.0015 0.0571 3.1702
Coefficients:
Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
(Intercept) -0.019667 0.001207 -16.297 <2e-16 ***
regr.ranger 0.213650 0.006611 32.319 <2e-16 ***
regr.xgboost -0.012230 0.005358 -2.283 0.0225 *
regr.cvglmnet 0.479673 0.006236 76.923 <2e-16 ***
regr.cubist 0.337446 0.005674 59.470 <2e-16 ***
---
Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1
Residual standard error: 0.1577 on 37312 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared: 0.9767, Adjusted R-squared: 0.9767
F-statistic: 3.91e+05 on 4 and 37312 DF, p-value: < 2.2e-16This shows that the model has an RMSE of 0.156 (in log-scale), which seems to be the among the best performing models for predicting soil organic carbon content in % from spectral scans. Thus, in this specific case, also the prediction error shows relatively narrow range of uncertainty.
Figure 5.7: Accuracy plot for log..oc_usda.calc_wpct/visnir.mir_mlr..eml_ossl_na_v1.rds the VisNIR-MIR combination. As compared with other calibration models this seems to be most accurate, although difference with the pure MIR model is not significant.
The bundle approach in the OSSL is used at the moment by default for all soil variables, although one should keep in mind that the training points are more patchy i.e. are less representative of the global conditions. As more and more training data is added to the OSSL, we should be able to serve more representative calibration models.
The bundle approach could be further extended to using also e.g.:
- spatial covariates (e.g. WorldClim layers),
- bare-Earth Spectra (Demattê et al., 2020),
- soil moisture daily estimates (matching the date of soil sampling) (Brocca et al., 2019),
Figure 5.8: Example of a satellite-based bare-earth spectral product based on Demattê et al. (2020). The global data is available at 250-m spatial resolution.
More and more layers will be gradually added to the OSSL registry to enable users to increase accuracy of their predictions. For updates in the OSSL model library please subscribe to our channels to stay up-to-date.
5.3 Registering your own model
5.3.1 Access OSSL data to fit your own models
To load the complete analysis-ready OSSL regression-matrix dataset (486MB) as a single table in R and run predictive modeling please use:
rep2 = "http://s3.us-east-1.wasabisys.com/soilspectroscopy/ossl_import/"
rm.ossl = readRDS(url(paste0(rep2, "rm.ossl_v1.rds"), "rb"))dim(rm.ossl)
## 152,146 obs. of 2962 variablesThe compilation currently contains training MIR (70k) and VisNIR (70k) spectral scans + soil calibration data (51,732 unique locations).
We are now fitting globally-applicable prediction models to enable free and open production of primary soil data. The output models are available via the S3 cloud-service and/or API under CC-BY license. If you fit your own models and/or if you are interested in contributing to this project please contact us and help us make better open soil data for global good!
5.3.2 Registering and hosting models
If you plan to contribute your own models to the Soil Spectroscopy for Global Good project please follow these steps:
- We recommend registering and sharing new models via S3 file
service system (e.g. via OpenGeoHub’s Wasabi.com cloud-service) with RDS files produced using
Dockerized solution for full scientific reproducibility.
- For each model the following metadata need to be supplied:
- Registered docker image; which should specify in detail: software in use, R package versions etc;
- DOI of the zenodo repository with a back-up for the data (i.e. how to cite your models);
- URL for accessing the RDS file via S3;
We can host your models on our infrastructure at no additional costs. Please contact us and apply for registering your models via soilspectroscopy.org.