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Carpathian Journal of Earth and Environmental Sciences

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ARTICLE IN » Volume 13, 2018 - Number 1

SOIL QUALITY ASSESMENT OF UPPER TIGRIS BASIN



Mesut BUDAK1*, Hikmet GUNAL2, İsmail CELIK3, Hakan YILDIZ4, Nurullah ACIR5 & Mert ACAR3
1Siirt Unıiv, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition, Siirt, Turkey m_budak1981@hotmail.com
2Gaziosmanpaşa Unıiv, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition, Tokat, Turkey hikmetgunal@gmail.com
3Çukurova Unıiv, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition, Adana, Turkey icelik@cu.edu.tr, macar@cu.edu.tr
4Central Research Institute for Field Crops, Ankara, Turkey, yildiz_hakan@hotmail.com
5Ahi Evran Unıiv, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition, Kırşehir, Turkey nurullah.acir@ahievran.edu.tr


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Abstract

DOI: 10.26471/cjees/2018/013/026

Economic life of the Tigris basin, part of the Mesopotamian depends heavily on agricultural production for thousands of years. Sustainability of agricultural production in this ancient region may only be possible by conserving and improving the ability of soils to function. Therefore, soil quality indexes were computed to evaluate and monitor functioning ability of pasture lands, forest lands, orchard and arable lands in the upper Tigris Basin of Mesopotamian. Soil samples were collected from (0–20 cm) at 134 locations from approximately the corners of 5km*5km size grid cells within 2.450 km2 research site. Twelve soil properties were measured as potential indicators of soil quality. A minimum data set (MDS) for each of land use was determined by means of principal component analysis (PCA) and expert opinion (EO) techniques. The weightages of each indicator were calculated using PCA and analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Soil quality index (SQI) for every sampling locations was calculated by weighted additive method following the use of linear scoring functions to obtain unitless indicator scores. The organic matter (OM), aggregate stability (AS) and slope were considered the most powerful and common soil attributes for distinguishing land uses in regard to soil quality and they can be used to monitor and assess the soil quality in this semi-arid environment. The SQI values of four land uses were significantly different (P˂0.01) from each other. The highest SQI value was obtained for forest land with EO (SQIEO=0.974) and the lowest SQI value was for orchards with PCA (SQIAHP=0.793). The results indicated that PCA and EO methods produced comparable results in assessment of soil quality.

Keywords:
  • Soil
  • quality
  • soil
  • fertility
  • linear
  • scoring
  • expert
  • opinion
  • PCA
  • AHP.

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© 2018 by the author(s). Licensee CJEES, Carpathian Association of Environment and Earth Sciences. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

How to cite

Mesut BUDAK, Hikmet GUNAL, İsmail CELIK, Hakan YILDIZ, Nurullah ACIR & Mert ACAR (2018). SOIL QUALITY ASSESMENT OF UPPER TIGRIS BASIN, Carpathian Journal of Earth and Environmental Sciences, February 2018, Vol. 13, No. 1, p. 301 - 316; https://doi.org/10.26471/cjees/2018/013/026

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