Abstract
Soil electrical conductivity (ECa) is a soil quality indicator associated to attributes interesting to site-specific soil management such as soil moisture and texture. Soil ECa provides information that helps guide soil management decisions, so we performed spatial evaluation of soil moisture in two experimental fields in two consecutive years and modeled its influence on soil ECa. Soil ECa, moisture and clay content were evaluated by statistical, geostatistical and regression analyses. Semivariogram models, adjusted for soil moisture, had strong spatial dependence, but the relationship between soil moisture and soil ECa was obtained only in one of the experimental fields, where soil moisture and clay content range was higher. In this same field, coefficients of determinations between soil moisture and clay content were above 0.70. In the second field, the low soil moisture and clay content range explain the absence of a relationship between soil ECa and soil moisture. Data repetition over the years, suggested that ECa is a qualitative indicator in areas with high spatial variability in soil texture.
Highlights
Soil electrical conductivity (ECa) is an effective and rapid indicator of soil variability and production potential (Corwin et al, 2003; Corwin and Lesch, 2005)
Data repetition over the years, suggested that ECa is a qualitative indicator in areas with high spatial variability in soil texture
We evaluated sites that had not been sampled in order to produce surface maps by ordinary block kriging
Summary
Soil electrical conductivity (ECa) is an effective and rapid indicator of soil variability and production potential (Corwin et al, 2003; Corwin and Lesch, 2005). This is associated to soil attributes interesting to precision agriculture. Electrical conductivity can be defined as the ability of a material to transmit or conduct electrical current. This is the case of soil, which can conduct an electrical current through electrolytes dissolved in soil solution (water) and through exchangeable cations close to charged particle surfaces and electrically mobile at a number of levels. Other authors have investigated the relationship between soil moisture and ECa (Sheets and Hendrickx, 1995) and ECa has been used for defining management zones taking water as the limiting factor (Besson et al, 2010)
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