Soil-Quality Assessment during the Dry Season in the Mun River Basin Thailand

Chunsheng Wu,Zhonghe Zhao,Gaohuan Liu,Erfu Dai,Youxiao Wang

doi:10.3390/land10010061

Chunsheng Wu, Zhonghe Zhao + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/land10010061

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Abstract

The Mun River Basin is one of Thailand’s major grain-producing areas, but the production is insufficient, and most of the cultivated lands are rain-fed and always unused in the dry season. All this makes it necessary to determine the status of soil nutrients and soil quality in the dry season to improve soil conditions, which will be useful for cultivation in the farming period. The aim of this study was to construct a soil-quality assessment based on soil samples, and in the process the minimum data set theory was introduced to screen the assessment indicators. The geographically weighted regression method was used to complete the spatial interpolation process of indicators, and the fuzzy logic model was constructed to evaluate the soil quality. The results showed that the spatial distributions of soil quality and indicators were similar. The soil quality was the best in the upstream while poor in the downstream, and the dry fields in the west and the forests in the east of the basin were better than other areas nearby. However; the soil qualities of paddy fields in the middle and east of the basin were poor due to the lack of soil nutrient supply when the fields were unused

Highlights

Lhasa Plateau Ecosystem Research Station, Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China; Abstract: The Mun River Basin is one of Thailand’s major grain-producing areas, but the production is insufficient, and most of the cultivated lands are rain-fed and always unused in the dry season
Based on the above description of the evaluation method and process, this study aims to evaluate the soil quality in the dry season in the Mun River Basin, and introduces the minimum data theory [23,24,25], geographic weighted regression model [26] and fuzzy logic model [27] to process and analyze the process of the indicator selection, indicator spatialization, and comprehensive evaluation respectively
The contents of soil organic matter (SOM) and total nitrogen (TN) were very low in the basin, but they had similar spatial distributions rules, with higher values in the west of the basin than other areas, and their contents were high in mountainous forests and dry fields but low in the paddy fields of the flat terrain area

Summary

Introduction

Lhasa Plateau Ecosystem Research Station, Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China; Abstract: The Mun River Basin is one of Thailand’s major grain-producing areas, but the production is insufficient, and most of the cultivated lands are rain-fed and always unused in the dry season. All this makes it necessary to determine the status of soil nutrients and soil quality in the dry season to improve soil conditions, which will be useful for cultivation in the farming period.

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Conclusion