“QS4” Extensión de Qgis para la Generación de Sitios de Muestreo de Suelos Susceptibles a Degradación por Procesos de Salinización

Abstract

The degradation of soils by salinization is a problem that affects the quality of soils worldwide, threatening food security and the sustainability of the territories. In view of the increasing deterioration in the quality of soils in Colombia, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development assumed the responsibility of monitoring this resource, assigning to the environmental authorities monitoring tasks of the soil quality as established in the National policy for sustainable land management. To meet this task, environmental authorities must carry out soil sampling campaigns, defining statistically representative, geographically accessible sampling sites located in soil units susceptible to salinization processes; however, the lack of technical tools to adequately define the sites makes it difficult the development of this work, increasing the costs of the field phase and reducing the quality of the results. For this reason the need arises to implement a GIS tool that allows to establish sites for soil sampling, which takes into account the aforementioned biophysical variables and that allows estimating the times associated with the field phase. In response to this need, an extension was developed for free GIS software called "QS4" which is capable of generating sampling sites within an area of interest from the analysis of the variables described above. The extension was developed under the approach of agile processes and incremental models framed in a methodological proposal of four phases that included the analysis of requirements, design, development and validation.