Geostatistical analysis for soil moisture content under the no tillage cropping system
Open Access
- 1 August 2006
- journal article
- Published by FapUNIFESP (SciELO) in Scientia Agricola
- Vol. 63 (4), 341-350
- https://doi.org/10.1590/s0103-90162006000400005
Abstract
Experiments in agriculture usually consider the topsoil properties to be uniform in space and, for this reason, often make inadequate use of the results. The objective of this study was to assess the variability for soil moisture content using geostatistical techniques. The experiment was carried out on a Rhodic Ferralsol (typic Haplorthox) in Campinas, SP, Brazil, in an area of 3.42 ha cultivated under the no tillage system, and the sampling was made in a grid of 102 points spaced 10 m x 20 m. Access tubes were inserted down to one meter at each evaluation point in order to measure soil moisture contents (cm³ cm-3) at depths of 30, 60 and 90 cm with a neutron moisture gauge. Samplings were made between the months of August and September of 2003 and in January 2004. The soil moisture content for each sampling date was analyzed using classical statistics in order to appropriately describe the central tendency and dispersion on the data and then using geostatistics to describe the spatial variability. The comparison between the spatial variability for different samplings was made examining scaled semivariograms. Water content was mapped using interpolated values with punctual kriging. The semivariograms showed that, at the 60 cm depth, soil water content had moderate spatial dependence with ranges between 90 and 110 m. However, no spatial dependence was found for 30 and 90 cm depths in 2003. Sampling density was insufficient for an adequate characterization of the spatial variability of soil moisture contents at the 30 and 90 cm depths.Keywords
This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit:
- Variabilidade espacial de propriedades físicas do solo em uma parcela experimentalRevista Brasileira de Ciência do Solo, 2005
- Estabilidade temporal da distribuição espacial da umidade do solo em área irrigada por pivô centralRevista Brasileira de Ciência do Solo, 1999
- Scale dependence and the temporal persistence of spatial patterns of soil water storageWater Resources Research, 1988
- Temporal Stability of Spatially Measured Soil Water Probability Density FunctionSoil Science Society of America Journal, 1985
- Geostatistical theory and application to variability of some agronomical propertiesHilgardia, 1983
- The Use of Cokriging with Limited Field Soil ObservationsSoil Science Society of America Journal, 1983
- Spatial Variability of Field‐Measured Infiltration RateSoil Science Society of America Journal, 1981