Mapping ordinal data in soil survey: a Costa Rican example

Three suitability maps for banana describing the spatial structure of qualitative variables obtained from survey data of soil samples from the Atlantic Zone of Costa Rica are compared. The 1:200 000 scale map was found most reliable, the 1:50 000 soil map was most readable while the map generated from interpolation of point observations had the most relevant data. This suggests that map choice for soil surveys should depend on the required quality criteria.