Improving the Management of a Semi-Arid Agricultural Ecosystem through Digital Mapping of Soil Properties: The Case of Salamanca (Spain)

Abstract

Soil protection and the increase and intensification of agricultural production require detailed knowledge of soil properties and their variability. On the other hand, the complexity associated with traditional soil mapping processes can lead to the implementation of inappropriate agricultural practices that degrade this resource. Therefore, it is necessary to use mapping techniques to provide more detailed information to farmers and managers. In this study, the geostatistical technique ordinary kriging was used to map the distribution of the most important edaphic properties (texture, nutrients content -N, P, K-, pH, organic carbon, water retention, COLE, carbonate content, and cation exchange capacity) from known sampled points, which allows inferring the value and distribution of the different edaphic parameters studied along the agricultural fields. The results obtained show after validation that the analysis of semivariograms is suitable for evaluating the distribution of the main soil parameters on a large scale, since it faithfully reflects their distribution and makes the ordinary kriging tool a suitable method for optimizing the resources available in soil mapping processes. In addition, the knowledge of these distributions made it possible to establish different recommendations for improving the management of the agricultural ecosystem, which will guarantee a higher agricultural yield as well as a better protection of the analyzed soils.

Keywords

• agrarian ecosystem
• GIS
• geostatistics
• kriging
• soil mapping