Spatial and fractal characterization of soil properties across soil depth in an agricultural field, Northeast Iran

Abstract

The present study was conducted to explore the fractal behavior and establish fractaldimensions of soil physical and chemical properties (i.e., sand, silt, and clay contents, bulkdensity, degree of moisture saturation, pH, organic carbon content, total nitrogen,available phosphorus, and available potassium) to characterize their spatial patterns. Soilsamples were collected from 0-30 (surface) and 30-60 cm (subsurface) depths from anagricultural field, Mashhad Plain, Northeast Iran. Descriptive statistics and fractal analysiswere used to describe the extent and form of variability. Spatial patterns of the soilproperties were estimated using GS+ 10.0 software. Soil properties showed low to highvariations in both surface and subsurface layers across the field, where bulk density andpH being the most reliable soil physical and chemical properties in the study area. Thevariability was high (CV > 35%) for total N, available P, available K and organic carbon inboth surface and subsurface soils and it could be attributed to management practices andmicro-topographical variations as these are the dynamic properties of soil. The fractaldimension (D) values of soil physical properties ranged from 1.398 to 1.913 at the surface,and from 1.874 to 1.934 at the subsurface indicating both short and long range variations.The D values for the chemical properties ranged from 1.331 to 1.975, and 1.148 to 1.990 inthe surface and subsurface layers, respectively. The results showed that fractal analysiscould be employed to effectively describe the structure of soil heterogeneity in spatialscale for effective agricultural and environmental management of soil.