Land Evaluation - Science topic

Sorry. Its not my area of expertise. I do not know this subject.

My research is focused on the reconstruction of potential paths between archaeological sites, but it is inevitable to apply the process to contemporary landscape!

Dear Praveen, the question is that the PTF must be evaluated with data measured, and where is necessary calibrated. Tecnically, before to use the hydraulic properties (HP) estimated by PTF in a simulation model, you need to compare the hydraulic properties measured of your soils (for each horizon) with the estimated from different PTFs, identifying the best one for your case study. None PTF can be considered proper to estimate the hydraulic properties of all soils of world. The PTF are produced starting from soil database (e.g. HYPRES from european soil dataset.. ) and not always the increase of parameters used inside means a better estimation of HP for your specific case study. You have to test they. Just for example, you can have an andosol with the same textural classes of an Inceptisol, then, if you use a PTF you will have the same hydraulicc parameterization for both soil. But in real, the physical system of these two soil are very different and you can see this different only if you measure the HP. Finally my opinion is that you need to test the PTF and find the best one for your case study, but at same time you need an help from pedologist or Hydropedologist to better understand the soil systems that you want to simulate.

You have to see this with GIS users. As for me I use visual methods (qualitative and quantitative approaches). See some of my publications on the website ResearchGate.

Isn't the answer in what your needs are? Pedological soil maps are useful for inferring co-varying soil properties (CECsoil varies with clay content, soil structure, plasticity index, etc.) of that soil pedogenetic soil type e.g. Vertic soils.

On the other hand all soils have a clay content it that is what is important the spatial variation in all soil types would be more useful but less useful for extrapolation.

I think there are studies that specifies the precision of the CLC for particular areas / countries. For example, the accuracy of CLC for Poland is estimated from 92.7%. Everything depends on the precision that you assumed for your studies. But Andreas Paul is right some errors are inevitable.

Maybe take a look at Rawls 1983: Estimating soil bulk-density from particle-size analysis and organic-matter content. and Ruehlmann & Körschens 2009: Calculating the Effect of Soil Organic Matter Concentration on Soil Bulk Density.

They probably list a number of other papers relevant for your purpose.