Geostatistical Analysis of Surface Soil Texture from Zala County in Western Hungary

Proceedings of the International Symposium on Environment, Energy and Water in Nepal: Recent Researches and Direction for Future. 31 March – 01 April 2009, Hotel Himalaya, Kathmandu, Nepal

K. Adhikari, A. Guadagnini, G. Toth and T. Hermann. Pages 219 – 224

“Soil texture is one of the most important soil properties governing most of the physical, chemical and hydrological properties of soils. Variability in soil texture may contribute to the variation in nutrient storage and availability, water retention and transport and binding and stability of soil aggregates. It can directly or indirectly influence many other soil functions and soil threats such as soil erosion. Geostatistics has been extensively used for quantifying the spatial pattern of soil properties and Kriging techniques are proving sufficiently robust for estimating values at unsampled locations in most of the cases. In our study, we show the applicability of Ordinary Kriging techniques to characterize the spatial variation of soil texture i.e. sand and clay content on the basis of 100 samples collected over a forest mixed agriculture farming area covering about 250sq. km of Zala County in western Hungary. Our study supports the usefulness of geostatistical techniques to analyze the spatial distribution of soil texture content. The results (provided in terms of prediction maps and their associated variance) can be used as a source of information for the development and implementation of any further land management and soil and water conservation plans in the study area.”

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