Soil and geomorphic surfaces were studied on a sandstone/basalt hillslope segment, commonly found in the Jaboticabal region (NW São Paulo State). Main objectives were to relate the geomorphic surfaces with chemical, physical and mineralogical properties of Oxisols and to apply geostatistic methods as a helping tool for their automatic location. Soils were sampled at depths of 0.6 to 0.8 m (upper B-horizons) in a 1,700 m long transect at regular 25 m intervals, amounting to 109 sampling sites. Soil samples were analyzed for particle […]

The state-space approach is used to evaluate the relation between soil physical and chemical properties in an area cultivated with sugarcane. The experiment was carried out on a Rhodic Kandiudalf in Piracicaba, State of São Paulo, Brazil. Sugarcane was planted on an area of 0.21 ha i.e., in 15 rows 100 m long, spaced 1.4 m. Soil water content, soil organic matter, clay content and aggregate stability were sampled along a transect of 84 points, meter by meter. The state-space […]

In soils constructed after coal mining, superficial contamination with pyrite coal residues causes acidification, accelerates the mineral weathering, increases Al and Mn contents, and base leaching. The present work evaluated chemical characteristics, clay content and mineralogy, and the spatial variability for some of these characteristics in three constructed soil areas after surface coal mining in Lauro Müller, Santa Catarina State, Brazil. The selected areas present differences in their topographic soil construction. The first area, Juliana Mine (MJ), was constructed in […]

Soil spatial variability in relation to soil formation and agricultural management has been an appealing area of research recently. When the distance between samples causes increased variation of a property, this variation can in part be explained by spatial dependency. The analysis of spatial variability is an important support for the planning of experiments and to evaluate effects of treatments, aiming to reduce experimental variations attributed to random error. The infiltration rate, normally of high spatial variability, is agronomically important […]

The determination of the spatial distribution of soil properties is important to understand soil constraints to plant nutrition and appropriate management of soil resources in recently cultivated areas, particularly where only data from exploratory soil surveys are available . This study addresses spatial variability of clay content (At) and exchangeable potassium (Kt) in soil samples collected in July of 1994, located in Southern Mato Grosso, Brazil. Geostatistical methods were used to describe the spatial variability and predict these soil properties […]

Irrigation quality has been described by calculated parameters assuming that water storage capacity in soil is a constant. However, this property presents spatial variations. Concern with environmental and economic aspects has led to culture management in specific areas, a fact which requires knowledge of spatial distribution of soil properties. Geostatistics makes possible the identification of the spatial dependence structure and the mapping of a given soil property. The objective of this work was to identify sampling and block kriging intensities, […]

Soil heterogeneity is known to cause variability of soil-water storage. Thus intensive sampling is required to characterize its spatial pattern. For irrigation management, it is necessary to measure the soil water content between irrigations. The objectives of this paper are to identify whether spatial patterns of soil water content in sprinkler irrigated area present temporal stability and whether this property presents spatial dependence. Temporal stability of spatial dependence structures and spatial correlation with clay content were studied. A 180 m long […]

Two methods were evaluated for scaling a set of semivariograms into a unified function for kriging estimation of field-measured properties. Scaling is performed using sample variances and sills of individual semivariograms as scale factors. Theoretical developments show that kriging weights are independent of the scaling factor which appears simply as a constant multiplying both sides of the kriging equations. The scaling techniques were applied to four sets of semivariograms representing spatial scales of 30 x 30 m to 600 x […]