The Use of Voronoi Tessellations in Processing Soil Survey Results

The Greek Soil Survey Project involves sampling at a large number of points and the production of maps using these points to define regions of similar soil type. Currently the maps are plotted by manual interpretation of the survey results. This paper investigates one approach to reducing the amount of manual processing required, beginning the automated process from the point data. The method employed defines Voronoi tessellations from the sample points. Areas of similar soil type are then isolated by removal of edges between adjacent tessellations with the same soil classification. The resulting polygon mosaic is the amalgamated with topographical features to produce the detailed soil map.