Sh. Asghari; S. Dizajghoorbani Aghdam; Abazar Esmali
Abstract
Knowledge of the spatial distribution of soil properties is the major issues in identifying, program planning, management and utilization of soil and water resources. This study was carried out to investigate the spatial variability of some important soil physical quality indices including sand, silt, ...
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Knowledge of the spatial distribution of soil properties is the major issues in identifying, program planning, management and utilization of soil and water resources. This study was carried out to investigate the spatial variability of some important soil physical quality indices including sand, silt, clay, mean weight diameter of aggregates (MWD), organic carbon (OC), saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks), saturated water content (θs) and bulk density (Db) in the three adjacent land uses i.e. forest, agriculture and range land located at Fandoghlou region of Ardabil. Totally, 100 soil samples were systematically (100 × 100 m grade) taken from 0-15 cm depth in spring 2013. At first, the accuracy of Kriging and inverse distance weighting (IDW) geostatisticaly methods in mapping of studied parameters was evaluated then the final map was presented. The values of nugget effect to sill ratio for clay, sand and silt were 0.5, 0.47 and 0.49, respectively so these parameters have an average spatial structure. The values of above mentioned ratio for OC, Db, θs, Ks, and MWD were obtained 0.002, 0.014, 0.0007, 0.05 and 0.008, respectively, indicating strong spatial structure. According to the R2 criteria, Kriging method in estimating clay, sand and silt and IDW method in estimating MWD, OC, Ks ،θs and Db had the highest accuracy. The final map indicated that forest land had higher OC, MWD and Ks and lower Db compared with agriculture and range land. The results of this research showed that soil physical quality of the studied region in agriculture and range land uses was lower than forest lands.