Spatial variability pattern and mapping of selected soil properties in hilly areas of Hindukush range northern, Pakistan

Year 2018, Volume: 7 Issue: 4, 355 - 364, 01.10.2018

Munir Ahmad Dost Muhammad Maria Mussarat Muhammad Naseer Muhammad A. Khan Abid A. Khan Muhammad İzhar Shafi

https://doi.org/10.18393/ejss.466424

Cited By: 1

Abstract

Soil
samples at 0-20 cm depth were collected from major crop areas of Hindukush
mountainous range, District Chitral, extreme Northwestern Pakistan, during
April 2014 to assess their physico-chemical properties and spatial distribution
pattern. 103 soil samples were analyzed and maps were created by geostatistical
technique of inverse distance weighting and kriging techniques using GIS and GS
win-7 computer software. The soil texture ranged from silt loam to dominantly
sandy loam, slightly acidic to alkaline and moderate to highly calcareous but
with no salinity indication. Soil organic matter was higher than 2 % in about
75 % of samples. Soil pH, EC and lime showed slight dependence on each other
with r values from 0.4 to 0.5 while OM varied independently as indicated by
their lower correlation values. Semivariogram analysis showed that soil pH,
lime, OM had strong spatial dependence (nugget-sill ratio, <25%) while silt,
sand, EC had moderately (nugget-sill ratio, 25-75%) and clay had weakly
distributed in the area. Linear, Gaussian and exponential models were used for
different soil parameter based on nugget, mean prediction error and root mean
square standardize prediction error values and maps were developed through
extension techniques to cover all the area outside the sampling points.

Keywords

Spatial variability, soil mapping, kriging, Chitral district, geostatistics

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