Soil & Water Res., 2016, 11(2):105-113 | DOI: 10.17221/233/2015-SWR

Using magnetic susceptibility mapping for assessing soil degradation due to water erosionOriginal Paper

Ondřej JAKŠÍK¹, Radka KODEŠOVÁ¹, Aleš KAPIČKA², Aleš KLEMENT¹, Miroslav FÉR¹, Antonín NIKODEM¹

¹ Department of Soil Science and Soil Protection, Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic;

² Institute of Geophysics of the CAS, Prague, Czech Republic

This study focused on developing a method for estimating topsoil organic carbon content from measured mass-specific magnetic susceptibility in Chernozems heavily affected by water erosion. The study was performed on a 100 ha area, whereby 202 soil samples were taken. A set of soil samples was divided into 3 subsets: A (32 samples), B (67 samples), and C (103 samples). The mass-specific magnetic susceptibility using low (χ_lf) and high (χ_hf) frequency, and organic carbon content were measured at all soil samples. The contents of iron and manganese, extracted with a dithionite-citrate solution (Fe_d, Mn_d) and ammonium oxalate (Fe_o, Mn_o), were quantified in A and B samples. Models for predicting organic carbon content from magnetic susceptibilities were designed as follows: (1) subset A was used as the training set for calibration, and subsets B and C were used as the test sets for model validation, either separately (subset B only), or together (merged subsets B and C); (2) merged subsets A and B were used as the training set and subset C was used as the test set. Results showed very close correlations between organic carbon content and all measured soil properties. Obtained models relating organic carbon content to mass-specific magnetic susceptibility successfully predicted soil organic carbon contents.

Keywords: arable land; geomorphologically diverse areas; Chernozem; magnetic susceptibility; soil organic carbon; spatial variability

Published: June 30, 2016  Show citation