Effects of vegetation, terrain and soil layer depth on eight soil chemical properties and soil fertility based on hybrid methods at urban forest scale in a typical loess hilly region of China

作者：Xinping Zhang, Fangfang Zhang, Dexiang Wang, Junxi Fan, Youning Hu, Haibin Kang, Mingjie Chang, Yue Pang, Yang Yang, Yang Feng · 发表于：PLoS ONE · 年份：2018 · DOI：10.1371/journal.pone.0205661 · 被引用次数：23 · 研究领域：Land Use and Ecosystem Services、Soil and Land Suitability Analysis、Soil Geostatistics and Mapping

Although the spatial mapping and fertility assessment of soil chemical properties (SCPs) are well studied in the Loess Plateau region of China at farmland scale, little is known about spatial mapping the SCPs and their fertility and their influence factors at urban forest scale. The objectives of this study were to (1) compare the performance of two spatial interpolation methods, Ordinary kriging (OK) and regression kriging (RK), and (2) explain the relationships of the vegetation, terrain, and soil layer depth between the eight SCPs and their fertility, and (3) find the limiting factors of soil comprehensive fertility in this study area? The Yan'an urban forest was taken as study case, used hybrid spatial interpolation methods based on OK and RK to mapping eight SCPs and the soil fertility in each soil layer (0-20 cm, 20-40 cm, and 40-60 cm) for 285 soil samples. The results indicated that RK outperformed OK for total nitrogen (TN), available potassium (AK), organic matter (OM) in 0-60 cm profile and available phosphorus (AP) in the 0-20 cm and 40-60 cm soil layers because RK considered the impact of terrain. The terrain factors, comprising the relative terrain position, slope, aspect, and relative elevation significantly affected the SCPs and spatial heterogeneity of fertility, where the vegetation cover types determined the average SCPs to some extent. On average, the six SCPs (except total potassium and AP) and the fertility decreased as the soil layer depth increased. Te...