Development of the database «heat soil portraits»

The paper considers the problem associated with the creation of databases. The review of available global, traditional soil databases is given. It is noted that they are of great scientific and practical importance. The description of the developed relational database «Heat Soil Portraits» in Microsoft Access is presented, based on the positive concept of representative soil profiles. The database contains information about the structural organization and thermal properties of natural and technogenic soils in Central Siberia. To create the database, we used materials from a morphological description, photographing, and ground radiometric survey in the thermal range of soil profiles obtained by the authors during the expeditionary work. Radiometric survey of soils was carried out according to the author’s method using a portable thermal camera. The structure of the designed database, its content and attributes are developed. Currently, the database includes information on 20 soil profiles of the main soil types and technogenic surface formations that are common in Central Siberia. The procedure for replenishing the created database with new information is simple to perform. A feature of the proposed database is the presence of photographs and thermal portraits attached to the description of a particular soil profile, which display the temperature distribution and structural organization of the soil profile. For each soil profile, temperature gradients are calculated that characterize the specific thermophysical properties of organogenic and mineral horizons. The prospect of DB development is replenishment with the results of radiometric surveys carried out in different seasons of the year and in different conditions of soil formation. Thus, the materials contained in the database can be used to assess the temporal and spatial variability of soils as a result of exposure to natural and anthropogenic factors