An Application of Simulated Annealing Algorithm for Soil Sampling Designing

There exist some soil field samples which were accumulated through several historical soil surveys and/or specific field studies, which are mainly data source for predicting spatial variation distribution of soil properties. However, the sample size is usually small and the distribution is ad hoc. Therefore, it is necessary to design additional samples to improve the existing sample set. On the other hand, the follow-up sampling designing scheme should integrate the existing samples for reducing sampling cost. This paper presented a new method which not only can integrate the existing samples but also can improve sampling efficiently by simulated annealing algorithm. In the Laolaihe watershed, Neijiang county, Heilongjiang Province in China, we designed 1, 5, 10, 15 soil samples by simulated annealing algorithm. The case study showed that the soil map produced based on the samples designed by simulated annealing algorithm was more reliable and the samples were much reasonable.