Spatial and fractal characterization of soil properties across soil depth in an agricultural field, Northeast Iran

Yıl 2018, Cilt: 7 Sayı: 2, 93 - 102, 01.04.2018

Ali Keshavarzi Henry Oppong Tuffour Ali Bagherzadeh Duraisamy Vasu

https://doi.org/10.18393/ejss.339032

Cited By: 7

Öz

The present study was conducted to explore the
fractal behavior and establish fractal dimensions of soil physical and chemical
properties (i.e., sand, silt, and clay contents, bulk density, degree of
moisture saturation, pH, organic carbon content, total nitrogen, available
phosphorus, and available potassium) to characterize their spatial patterns.
Soil samples were collected from 0-30 (surface) and 30-60 cm (subsurface)
depths from an agricultural field, Mashhad Plain, Northeast Iran. Descriptive statistics and fractal analysis
were used to describe the extent and form of variability. Spatial patterns of
the soil properties were estimated using GS+ 10.0 software.  Soil properties showed low to high variations
in both surface and subsurface layers across the field, where bulk density and
pH being the most reliable soil physical and chemical properties in the study
area. The variability was high (CV > 35%) for total N, available P,
available K and organic carbon in both surface and subsurface soils and it could
be attributed to management practices and micro-topographical variations as
these are the dynamic properties of soil. The
fractal dimension (D) values of soil physical properties ranged from 1.398 to
1.913 at the surface, and from 1.874 to 1.934 at the subsurface indicating both
short and long range variations. The D values for the chemical properties
ranged from 1.331 to 1.975, and 1.148 to 1.990 in the surface and subsurface
layers, respectively. The results showed that fractal analysis could be employed
to effectively describe the structure of soil heterogeneity in spatial scale
for effective agricultural and environmental management of soil.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Fractal dimension, Hurst exponent, Spatial variability, Self-similarity, Semivariogram

Kaynakça

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