Including soil spatial neighbor information for digital soil mapping

Digital soil mapping (DSM) is transforming how we understand and manage soil resources, offering high-resolution spatial–temporal soil information essential for addressing environmental challenges. The integration of environmental covariates has advanced soil mapping accuracy, while the potential of neighboring soil sample data has been largely overlooked. This study introduces soil spatial neighbor information (SSNI) as a novel approach to enhance the predictive power of spatial models. Utilizing two open-access datasets from LUCAS Soil and Meuse, our findings showed that incorporating SSNI improved the accuracy of random forest models in mapping soil organic carbon density (reduced %RMSE of 3.1%), cadmium (reduced %RMSE of 3.6%), copper (reduced %RMSE of 5.9%), lead (reduced %RMSE of 11.5%), and zinc (reduced %RMSE of 7.4%). Compared to the inclusion of buffer distance or oblique geographic coordinates for modelling, SSNI also performed better for both LUCAS Soil and Meuse datasets. This study underscores the value of SSNI in improving digital soil maps by capturing the neighboring information. Embracing SSNI could lead to more informed decision-making in soil management and its potential applicability across other disciplines also remains open for exploration in future research endeavors.