About this app

With the Soil TopARgraphy app, which allows viewing and manipulating a terrain model, APBI 200 students will learn how topography impacts distribution of soil orders through its effects on microclimate (i.e. temperature and water). Students will be able to view the terrain model with a color-coded height map or a photorealistic satellite image. Furthermore, students can tap on flags to read about different soil orders, see images, watch a video, and take a self-study quiz to review their understanding.


# Background #

As a part of the curriculum, students in the APBI 200 course learn about 10 soil orders, where the soil order is the broadest classification category in the Canadian system of soil classification. The topics of soil formation and classification are of direct importance for land use and management. Hence, it is essential that our future land managers have a solid understanding of soil formation and factors – like topography – that drive it. These topics are currently covered in the APBI 200 course through a series of lectures, laboratory activities, video footage, web-based resources, and a couple campus-based field trips. However, there is still a need to enhance students’ learning on this important topic, which led to the development of the Soil TopARgraphy app which brought in visual and tactile elements to the learning experience.

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that overlays digital enhancements on top of existing reality, in this case through your phone. With AR, different soil orders are shown within one real-life terrain across different parts of topography. We chose an area just north of Kamloops, BC as an example of the terrain model since the region is characterized by a great diversity of soil types.

New features

We've brought out a razor and sliced the app up. Now the install size is much smaller! We've also improved AR tracking.

App Permissions

Allows applications to open network sockets.
Allows an app to access precise location.
Required to be able to access the camera device.
Allows an app to access approximate location.
Allows applications to access information about networks.
Allows an application to write to external storage.
Allows an application to read from external storage.