Spatial continuity of soil attributes in an Atlantic Forest remnant in the Mantiqueira Range, MG

Abstract

The spatial characterization of soil attributes is fundamental for the understanding of forest ecosystems. The objective of this work was to develop a geostatistical study of chemical and physical soil attributes at three depths (D1 – 0-20 cm; D2 – 20-50 cm; D3 – 50-100 cm), in an Experimental Hydrographic Micro-catchment entirely covered by Atlantic Forest, in the Mantiqueira Range region, Minas Gerais. All the considered variables presented spatial dependence structure in the three depths, and the largest degrees of spatial dependence were observed for pH in the three depths, soil cation exchange capacity potential in D3, soil organic matter in D1 and D3 and clay and soil bulk density in D2. The method most used for the adjustments of semi-variogram models was the Maximum Likelihood and the most selected model was the Exponential. Furthermore, the ordinary kriging maps allowed good visualization of the spatial distribution of the variables.