Abstract

ABSTRACTSince spatial heterogeneity of soil physical properties has a significant influence on site‐specific irrigation management, field moisture capacity, saturated moisture content, wilting point and soil dry bulk density were used as the data source to derive irrigation management zones. The spatial heterogeneity and correlations of soil properties were firstly characterized using geostatistics and principal component analysis. Then, irrigation management zones were delineated by running management zone analysis software based on the fuzziness performance index and normalized classification entropy, which were used to determine the least number of subzones. Finally, the zoning of irrigation management was verified by performing a statistical analysis as a statistical control of the above classifications. The study site was divided into two subzones having distinct differences between them, indicating that the delineation of irrigation management zones was reasonable. In additional, a stratified sampling method was also adopted to calculate the optimal sampling size of the soil properties in each subzone. Saturated moisture content has the optimal sampling size of 12 and soil water capacity and wilting point have the least, with only 3. The delineation of irrigation management zones and optimal sampling size could provide data support and science‐based information for site‐specific irrigation management. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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