LiDAR-based potato crop suitability mapping along the Upper Saint John River Valley in New Brunswick
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Date
2022-12
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University of New Brunswick
Abstract
This thesis reports on potato crop suitability mapping along the Upper Saint John River Valley in New Brunswick based on province-wide available high-resolution light detection and ranging (LiDAR) derived digital elevation model (DEM). Potato crop suitability rating was done by way of multi-criteria evaluation accounting for (i) topsoil and subsoil texture, (ii) soil calcareousness, (iii) soil coarse fragment content, (iv) depthto-compaction of soil, (v) soil drainage (depth-to-water table (DTW)), and (vi) elevation (slope percent). It was found that:
1. the tax assessment values of farmlands and farm and woodland combinations reflect the soil suitability for potato cropping across the Saint John River Valley, as mapped;
2. some of the field-surveyed soil property and associated tuber yield variations can be quantified and mapped using the LiDAR-DEM derived flow channels and associated DTW layers; this verification was done based on three published field-survey reports that deal with potato cropping near Saint-André, Florenceville, and Hartland, NB.