Abstract
The objectives of this study were (i) to assess soil fertility quality changes in time and space using grey relational analysis (GRA) and geographic information systems (GIS) in the urban-rural transition zone of Beijing and (ii) to explore thevariation features of soil fertility under different land use types and soil management practices. The distribution map of soil fertility quality showed that soil fertility quality was best in the north, south, southeast and middle part of the district in 1980. The first-grade quality (I) was mainly in the southeast and the third-grade quality (III) was mainly in the north, south, northwest, east and middle part of the district. The area of first-grade quality (I) and the third-grade quality (III) increased from 79.17 to 120.10 km2 and from 111.59 to 184.53 km2 from 1980 to 2007, respectively, while the area of second-grade quality (II) decreased from 81.64 to 70.68% of the total land area from 1980 to 2007. The main factors influencing the spatial distribution of soil fertility quality were land use and soil management practices. The increasing trend of soil fertility quality might be attributed to the widespread practices of straw returning and organic manure applications. Key words: Soil fertility quality, spatial-temporal variability, geographic information systems (GIS), grey relational analysis (GRA), urban-rural transition zone, land use, soil management practices.
Highlights
Soil as a vital natural resource, performs key environmental, economic and social functions
According to soil fertility quality classifications of FAO (FAO, 1976) (Table 2), the grey relational degree of every evaluation unit was divided into five classes to obtain the spatial distribution map of the soil fertility quality (Figures 5 and 6)
Previous studies indicated that the soil fertility quality declined when the unutilized lands were reclaimed (Sun et al, 2003), but our results indicate that the soil fertility quality was improved when the unutillized lands were reclamed
Summary
Soil as a vital natural resource, performs key environmental, economic and social functions. It is nonrenewable within human time scales, develops slowly and changes gradually over time, showing great spatial variability (Borut et al, 2008). Soil fertility changes and the nutrient balances are taken as key indicators of soil quality (Jansen et al, 1995). Soil fertility quality varies spatially and temporally from field to region scale, and is influenced by both land use and soil management practices (Sun et al, 2003). Understanding variability of soil fertility quality and its distribution are important to improve sustainable land use strategies (Qi et al, 2009)
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