Technology and local wisdom: The Maya soil classification app.

The Maya knowledge of soils has overcome the mistrust of soil scientist towards local and indigenous knowledge because it is a classification system with hierarchically organized concepts. With the aim of popularizing and improving Maya soil knowledge, we developed the Maya soil classification app. The app includes the description of Maya soil classes and of three Maya ecological terms (Petén, Kankabal, and A'kalche') that associate the physical and biotic environments. The app includes photographs of soil profiles with their corresponding Maya terms and international classifications, along with a Maya soil classification map of the Mexican state of Yucatán showing the geographical location of Maya soil classes. Trough GPS services, the user can identify in the app the associations within local Maya soil classes. In this article we describe the structure and function of the app. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]