Soil mapping and delineation of management zones in the Western Ghats of coastal India

Abstract

AbstractThe pace of land degradation has almost doubled across the Western Ghats of India, one of the world's ‘hotspots’ for biodiversity, owing to soil erosion, mining, and rampant urbanization. The arising nutrient depletion leading to land degradation is thus a serious threat to agricultural sustainability in this region. Delineation of spatial soil property maps for nutrient management is an effective strategy for precision agriculture. The present investigation was carried out in North Goa District in Western Ghats, a seldom researched domain in the Indian coastal region. The study involved spatial array analysis of soil properties of 383 georeferenced soil samples and used fuzzy k‐means clustering for delineation of management zones (MZs). Soils were found highly acidic with low available N, P, and medium exchangeable K with a widespread Zn, Cu, and Fe deficiency and sporadic salinity. Soil properties exhibited low to high levels of skewness except for soil pH and Mn. Correlations between soil pH and K, Zn, and Mn, between EC and Fe, between soil organic carbon (SOC) and N, P, K, Cu, and Mn was positive and significant (P = 0.01). Geostatistical analysis revealed varied distribution pattern for soil properties with Gaussian (pH, P, and Cu), spherical (EC), stable (SOC), hole effect (N), K‐Bessel (K and Fe), exponential (Zn), and circular (Mn) as best fit semivariogram models with weak and strong spatial dependence. The spatial variability was mapped, and two MZs were delineated. The developed maps will be crucial in site‐specific nutrient management for agricultural and ecological sustainability in the Western Ghats of India.