The earthworm example sounds quite like  Beckett or  Webster.

As well as the mainstream papers in Nature and Journal of Soil Science with Webster, Bie and Burrough, Philip Beckett also wrote some single author papers.  The material you want may be in them.

1967  J Indian Soil Science Society  15 187- 

1971  Outlook on Agriculture 6 (5) 191-198

1977  J Soil & Water Conservation  33  (1) 15 - 20

0ther possibly useful legacy papers:

Handreck K A  1978.  CSIRO Division of  Soils. Report 35

Valentine K W  et al. 1981.  Canadian J Soil Science 61 (1)  123- 135

Zayach S J 1973.  Geoderma 10  67 -74

This one can be useful, although it is not the one you look for. 

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v219/n5155/abs/219680a0.html

Hello Philippe,

I like your comment and remarks and I agree with you!

Best regards from Germany, Stefan

Umberto,

     Yes, thank you. I am aware of that article by Webster and Becket, which I have cited recently in a paper on geostatistics. They comment that soil maps are useful to farmers and engineers, but unfortunately, say nothing about the kind of information maps need to contain to be really useful to them... Clearly, the needs of farmers and engineers are likely to be very different... Can a single soil map satisfy their needs?

The earthworm example sounds quite like  Beckett or  Webster.

As well as the mainstream papers in Nature and Journal of Soil Science with Webster, Bie and Burrough, Philip Beckett also wrote some single author papers.  The material you want may be in them.

1967  J Indian Soil Science Society  15 187- 

1971  Outlook on Agriculture 6 (5) 191-198

1977  J Soil & Water Conservation  33  (1) 15 - 20

0ther possibly useful legacy papers:

Handreck K A  1978.  CSIRO Division of  Soils. Report 35

Valentine K W  et al. 1981.  Canadian J Soil Science 61 (1)  123- 135

Zayach S J 1973.  Geoderma 10  67 -74

You might like to contact Daivid Dent, in case it was him or Tony Young           

[email protected]

I guess I recently read this text, but I can't remember if it was on Soil genesis and classification by Buol et al. or within the memories of a tropical soils congress of the 70's. I'll look for the sentence hoping to find it out.

However, this idea is the first step in any soil survey book, for example I'll recommend you to see:

– Dent, D. and Young, A., 1981 Soil survey and land evaluation. London, England: George Allen &Unwin.

On soil taxonomies and classifications including many of the references quoted by you you can read this book of 2013.

http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC79481

All the best

Juan José Ibáñez

As a soil scientist who maps soil I would like to add that there are many things about soil that we know, but also many which we do not know and this is a growing science.  What I is useful to one person has no use to another.  When we map soils we look at the physical properties of the soil as well as the landscape and climate.  From these properties we can develop interpretations.  There are long standing interpretations for many things but new interpretations can now be written because the map data has been digitized and the property data is on computer.  Now we can write a customized interpretations for things like "Earthworm population probability" and show on a map where to find these areas.  If an interpretation is needed for which we have insufficient data and there appears to be a great enough need, more data can be collected and added to the database.

In Poland soil-agricultural maps at a scale of 1:5 000 were prepared in the 1960’s in the analogue form (colour and black and white) for the area of the entire country. They were developed based on the existing classification maps as well as field and laboratory studies preceded by the interpretation of aerial photographs. They constitute a valuable collection of information on the soil conditions, agricultural usefulness of land, and indirectly on the usefulness of the land for other, non-agricultural functions. They constitute a source of information used in taking planning decisions e.g. designation of land for development in rural areas and to allocate land for afforestation. Other applications include estimating the value of agricultural real estate in the land consolidation procedure. Contours with an area of more than 0.5 ha were marked on the maps. Small or narrow elements providing significant information on the agricultural production space were included. The accuracy of the contours distinguished is estimated for approx. 10-50 m. The uncertainty of the location of the boundaries results from the accuracy of marking of soil-agricultural contours, and lack of consideration of the continuality of changes in the soil cover both in the geographical space and in the space of attributes describing it. Currently, based on the order of the Council of Ministers of 3 October 2011 on types of thematic and special cartographic documents [Journal of Laws No. 222, item 1328], thematic maps, including agricultural maps, are to become thematic digital documents considered in the spatial information infrastructure.