Spatial Variability of Soil Features Affected by Landuse Type using Geostatistics

Since the change of land use accrued in the Iran, especially in northern Iran, this research aims tocompare the spatial variability of soil properties in three adjacent land uses including cultivated by wheat lands, grazing lands and forest Lands covered by juniperus sp, fagus orientalis, quercus castanifolia, and acer velotinum species in kiasar region, Mazandaran Province, northern Iran. Some of soil features, i.e. pH, CaCO3, total nitrogen (TN), soil organic carbon (SOC), electric conductivity (EC), percentage of silt, clay and sand contents and saturation moisture content(SM) were measured at a grid with 20 m sampling distance on the top soil (0 – 30 cm depth). Accordingly, total of 147samples were taken from 49 soil sites. The normality of data was examined by the tests of normality. Then, data were analyzed by using of geostatistics approach. The results showed that spatial distribution of many soil properties could be well described by spherical model in the forest and exponential model in the cultivated and grazing lands. Spatial dependences were the highest for SOC, EC and the lowest for silt, (SOC and silt) in the forest method and grazing lands, respectively. Deforestation and conversion to cultivated and grazing lands decreased spatial dependence of soil properties.