Evaluation of the Ability of LVQ4a2 Artificial Neural Network Model to Predict the Spatial Distribution Pattern of Cadmium in Soil

In this research، a learning vector quantization neural network (LVQ) model was developed to predict and classify the spatial distribution of cadmium in soil in Golestan province. The cadmium data were obtained from soils measuring total Cd contents in soil samples. Some statistical tests، such as means comparision، variance and statistical distribution were performed between the observed points samples data and the estimated cadmium values to evaluate the performance of the pattern recognition method. The Results showed that in training and test phase، there were no significant differences، with the confidence level of 95%، between the statsitcal parameters such as average، variance، statistical distribution and also coefficient of determination in the observed and the estimated cadmium concentrations. The results suggest that learning vector quantization (LVQ) neural network can learn cadmium cocentration model precisely. In addition the results also indicated that trained LVQ neural network had a high capability in predicting cadmium concentrations for non-sampled points. The technique showed that the LVQNN could predict and map the spatial cadmium concentrations variability. Our results indicated that it is possible to discriminate different cadmium levels in soil، using LVQNN.