Spatial Distribution of Soil Nutrients in Farmland in a Hilly Region of the Pearl River Delta in China Based on Geostatistics and the Inverse Distance Weighting Method

Rumi Wang, Runyan Zou, Jianmei Liu, Luo Liu and Yueming Hu
Additional contact information
Rumi Wang: College of Natural Resources and Environment, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
Runyan Zou: College of Natural Resources and Environment, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
Jianmei Liu: College of Natural Resources and Environment, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
Luo Liu: College of Natural Resources and Environment, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China
Yueming Hu: College of Natural Resources and Environment, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China

Agriculture, 2021, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Soil nutrients are essential factors that reflect farmland quality. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are essential elements for plants, while silicon is considered a “quasi-essential” element. This study investigated the spatial distribution of plant nutrients in soil in a hilly region of the Pearl River Delta in China. A total of 201 soil samples were collected from farmland topsoil (0–20 cm) for the analysis of total nitrogen (TN), available phosphorus (AP), available potassium (AK), and available silicon (ASi). The coefficients of variation ranged from 47.88% to 76.91%. The NSRs of TN, AP, AK, and ASi were 0.15, 0. 07, 0.12, and 0.13, respectively. The NSRs varied from 0.02 to 0.20. All variables exhibited weak spatial dependence (R 2 < 0.5), except for TN (R 2 = 0.701). After comparing the prediction accuracy of the different methods, we used the inverse distance weighting method to analyze the spatial distribution of plant nutrients in soil. The uniform spatial distribution of AK, TN overall showed a trend of increasing from northeast to southwest, and the overall spatial distribution of AP and ASi showed that the northeast was higher than the southwest. This study provides support for the delimitation of basic farmland protection areas, the formulation of land use spatial planning, and the formulation of accurate farmland protection policies.

Keywords: cultivated land; geostatistical methods; Pearl River Delta; soil nutrients; spatial distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/1/50/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/1/50/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:11:y:2021:i:1:p:50-:d:477804

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().