Scale-location specific relations between soil nutrients and topographic factors in the Fen River Basin, Chinese Loess Plateau

Abstract

Understanding scale- and location-specific variations of soil nutrients in cultivated land is a crucial consideration for managing agriculture and natural resources effectively. In the present study, wavelet coherency was used to reveal the scale-location specific correlations between soil nutrients, including soil organic matter (SOM), total nitrogen (TN), available phosphorus (AP), and available potassium (AK), as well as topographic factors (elevation, slope, aspect, and wetness index) in the cultivated land of the Fen River Basin in Shanxi Province, China. The results showed that SOM, TN, AP, and AK were significantly inter-correlated, and that the scales at which soil nutrients were correlated differed in different landscapes, and were generally smaller in topographically rougher terrain. All soil nutrients but TN were significantly influenced by the wetness index at relatively large scales (32–72 km) and AK was significantly affected by the aspect at large scales at partial locations, showing localized features. The results of this study imply that the wetness index should be taken into account during farming practices to improve the soil nutrients of cultivated land in the Fen River Basin at large scales.

Keywords

soil nutrients / wavelet coherency / wetness index / spatial variation / cultivated land

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Innovation Grant of Shanxi Agricultural University (2014009), Shanxi Programs for Science and Technology Development of China (20120311009-1), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51304130). The authors declared that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

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2016 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg