Decision-Tree-based data mining and rule induction for predicting and mapping soil bacterial diversity

Soilmicrobial ecology plays a significant role in global ecosystems. Nevertheless, methods of model prediction and mapping have yet to be established for soil microbial ecology. The present study was undertaken to develop an artificial-intelligence- and geographical information system (GIS)-integrated framework for predicting and mapping soil bacterial diversity using pre-existing environmental geospatial database information, and to further evaluate the applicability of soil bacterial diversity mapping for planning construction of eco-friendly roads. Using a stratified random sampling, soil bacterial diversity was measured in 196 soil samples in a forest area where construction of an eco-friendly road was planned. Model accuracy, coherence analyses, and tree analysis were systematically performed, and four-class discretized decision tree (DT) with ordinary pair-wise partitioning (OPP) was selected as the optimal model among tested five DT model variants. GIS-based simulations of the optimal DT model with varying weights assigned to soil ecological quality showed that the inclusion of soil ecology in environmental components, which are considered in environmental impact assessment, significantly affects the spatial distributions of overall environmental quality values as well as the determination of an environmentally optimized road route. This work suggests a guideline to use systematic accuracy, coherence, and tree analyses in selecting an optimal DT model from multiple candidate model variants, and demonstrates the applicability of the OPP-improved DT integrated with GIS in rule induction for mapping bacterial diversity. These findings also provide implication on the significance of soil microbial ecology in environmental impact assessment and eco-friendly construction planning.