An Algorithm for Mapping the Spatial Variability of Soil Physical Quality

Abstract

The search for sustainable agricultural production system has required the monitoring of the quality of agricultural soils as well as the generation of modern tools for mapping the spatial variability of factors affecting the productivity of crops. The purpose of this work was to develop and evaluate the performance of an algorithm for mapping the spatial variability of soil physical quality, and develop a user-friendly and free software to perform the algorithm. Basically, themethod consisted on: (1) Mapping the spatial variability of Easily Available Water (EAW), Air Filled Porosity (PA) and soil Penetration Resistance (PR), using geostatistics; and (2) Perform the integration of the maps of EAW, PA and PR into amap of Soil Physical Quality classes (SPQ), using Euclidean distance. The algorithm was tested in an agroecological farm with 6.24 ha, and was considered efficient to classify the SPQ. The attributes EAW and PA were the most important to define the SPQ of the study site. The software QUALIFIS met the demand for user-friendly software and can be applied in precision agriculture.