Pedodiversity: concepts and measures

Indices and models of diversity have proved to be valuable in ecology. They may be used to explore, quantify and compare the complexity of soil patterns in different areas and environments. The different ways of measuring diversity may be grouped into three classes: indices of richness, abundance distribution models, and indices based on proportional abundance of objects. Four scales of diversity can be distinguished: point scaling diversity (polypedon), a scaling diversity (soil association), y scaling diversity (landscape or drainage basin) and e scaling diversity (geographical soil region). Differentiation diversity is a measure of how different a range of soilscapes are in terms of the variety. Diversity-area relationships are then analyzed. Examples of how to apply these indices for analysing soil patterns and their results are shown. From these results it is inferred that diversity indices in the analysis of soil patterns would be similar to those for biodiversity in ecology. This suggests that there are common processes of organization of biotic and abiotic ecological structures.