Soil polygon disaggregation through similarity-based prediction with legacy pedons

Conventional soil maps generally contain one or more soil types within a single soil polygon.But their geographic locations within the polygon are not specified.This restricts current applications of the maps in site-specific agricultural management and environmental modelling.We examined the utility of legacy pedon data for disaggregating soil polygons and the effectiveness of similarity-based prediction for making use of the under-or over-sampled legacy pedon data for the disaggregation.The method consisted of three steps.First,environmental similarities between the pedon sites and each location were computed based on soil formative environmental factors.Second,according to soil types of the pedon sites,the similarities were aggregated to derive similarity distribution for each soil type.Third,a hardening process was performed on the maps to allocate candidate soil types within the polygons.The study was conducted at the soil subgroup level in a semi-arid area situated in Manitoba,Canada.Based on 186 independent pedon sites,the evaluation of the disaggregated map of soil subgroups showed an overall accuracy of 67% and a Kappa statistic of 0.62.The map represented a better spatial pattern of soil subgroups in both detail and accuracy compared to a dominant soil subgroup map,which was commonly used in practice.Incorrect predictions mainly occurred in the agricultural plain area and the soil subgroups that are very similar in taxonomy,indicating that new environmental covariates need to be developed.We concluded that the combination of legacy pedon data with similarity-based prediction is an effective solution for soil polygon disaggregation.

Reporting Children’s Development below the Test Floor: Looking Back and Forth to Describe Individual Strengths and Needs

The test floor effects seen in standardised tests lead to a standardised score of 1 or less with a flat profile that hides a child’s individual strengths and needs. The Griffiths III community of practitioners requested advice on the reporting of children’s development below the floor of the test, so that individual strengths and needs can be described. This paper reports the third phase of research following an earlier Scoping Review and a wider literature review. To confirm quality control, Phase 3 was conducted in a retrospective manner using the same methodology as the earlier phases but in a reverse direction. Peer reviewer comments and key elements from the Scoping Review and keywords from the publications were tabulated. Data analysis included a change of perspective to that of the child and their individual rights with respect to the literature themes already described in Phase 2. These confirmed that there is little specific guidance in the literature, but that computational advances for homogeneous populations and especially disaggregated data offer some solutions. A greater balance between broad biopsychosocial models and standardised models of assessment should be sought by practitioners together with the use of disaggregated data to highlight issues that pertain to individual subsets of results. This will ensure that the child’s right for their individual strengths and needs to be described together with a plan for management, may be met.

The Determinants of China's Minimum Wage Rates

We use a highly disaggregated panel of macro data and minimum wages at the county level to investigate the processes behind minimum wage adjustments in China.Relying on random effects models,spatial econometrics techniques,and multilevel analyses,we document that a comparatively small number of economic variables-including the local price level and GDP per capita-are important determinants of minimum wage rates.Interactions between adjacent counties and counties of the same administrative type,and centralized mechanisms,particularly at the provincial level,also play an important role in explaining the variance in minimum wage rates across counties.Finally,we show that China's provinces are the key players for setting minimum wage rates and that,when they do so,they are not uniform in the way they weigh different economic variables.