Dataset with "Utilising soil diagnostic features and environmental covariates to estimate nutrient content in Ethiopian soils"

Smallholder farmers in Ethiopia generally do not have access to soil testing services for nutrient management planning decisions; as soil analysis is too costly for most farmers. Fertiliser advice is generally accessible via blanket recommendations at a national scale. Hence, an alternative approach is needed to estimate soil nutrient content across the diverse landscapes of Ethiopia. In this study, we propose using diagnostic features to estimate soil nutrient content, which could contribute to the development of fertiliser recommendations. To achieve this the following objectives were defined: (i) to estimate soil nutrient content as influenced by soil diagnostic features; and (ii) to elucidate the influence of environmental covariates and diagnostic features on the estimation of soil nutrient levels in the Ethiopian context. Data from 550 soil profiles, distributed across Ethiopia, were collected from a range of published sources, collated and harmonised. The data were cleaned, and 496 soil profiles were prepared for modelling. To identify which diagnostic characteristics were present across these soils we applied a presence/absence scoring method to identify dominant diagnostic features.