Modelling and prediction of major soil chemical properties with Random Forest: Machine learning as tool to understand soil-environment relationships in Antarctica

Digital Soil Mapping includes quantitative estimations of soil attributes in areas with little or no soil information, being important in remote landscapes such as the Antarctic ice-free areas. Our objective was to predict the spatial distribution of major soil chemical attributes in two important Antarctic Peninsula regions; as well as to identify the main environmental drivers of these attributes. For this, we compiled one of the largest soil databases of Antarctica and applied the machine learning algorithm Random Forest to predict seven soil chemical attributes. We also used covariates selection and partial dependence analysis to better understand the relationships of the attributes with the environmental covariates. Bases sum was the attribute which presented the highest prediction performance, whereas Na and P predictions presented the lowest. Both accuracy and uncertainty indicators showed the difficulties of Random Forest in handling natural outliers. The soil attributes distribution were related to the mean annual temperature and annual precipitation, multispectral bands and indexes related to the vegetation response, rookeries distance expressing the birds’ activity, and topographic attributes. The attributes showed a climatic gradient, with higher values of bases sum, pH, and Na in Northern Antarctic Peninsula, and higher total organic carbon, H + Al and P in Maritime Antarctic. This shows the climate covariates influence the soil variability in a macroscale, whereas terrain predictors control the soil at local scales. This study showed the Digital Soil Mapping potential to surpass the limitations of conventional mapping and indicated the feasibility in obtaining interpretable predictions which can be directly associated with the soil forming factors. Finally, the data generated can be used as reference to monitor the impacts of the climate changes on the soils of Antarctica.