Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment

Effects of land use type and landscape position on soil quality in Three Gorges Reservoir Area, China

Author(s):

Zuoxiang Xiang ¹, Ronggui Hu ^2*, Minglei Feng ², Shan Lin ², Runlin Xiao ³

Recieved Date: 2011-01-12, Accepted Date: 2011-04-09

Abstract:

In many hilly regions of Three Gorges Reservoir Area, China, land use types diversity characteristics principally resulted from disafforestation, vegetation breakage, and increasing terraced field and artificial forest. In this paper, we elucidated the soil-land use type, soil-landscape position relationships at slope scale using quantitative methods based on the effects of land use and slope landscape position on the spatial distribution of soil nutrients. Five typical land use types (woodland, paddy field, upland, orchard and fallow) under four landscape positions (upper slope, middle slope, lower slope and foot slope) were chosen for this study. In each slope position, five different land use types were selected to collect soil samples. Two integrated quantitative indexes were developed to perform a comparison for soil quality under different land use and landscape position using principal component analysis (PCA) and multivariate statistical analysis. The results indicated that the soil quality index (SQI) values for forest, paddy, upland, orchard and fallow were 0.77, 0.35, 0.22, 0.38 and 0.53, respectively. These implied that woodland maybe is an optional choice to restore the soil fertility in some regions where soil conditions are suitable for forest secondary succession. The soil degradation index (SDI) was regarded as an integrated indication of soil quality in different slope positions. The positive value showed improvement of the soil quality, whereas negative value indicated deterioration of the soils. The calculated SDI reflected the percent changes in soil properties compared with middle slope position in this study. The SDI values for different slope positions from up to down were -13.3%, 0, -8.6% and 15.52%, respectively. These SDI values were represented by “N”-shaped distributions. SDI showed that foot and middle slope had higher soil quality compared to upper and lower slope. These results indicated that it is important for soil fertility conservation to adjust reasonably land use type in different slope positions, e.g. farmland can be reclaimed in foot slope position.

Keywords:

Soil quality, land use, landscape position, SQI, SDI

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Journal: Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment
Year: 2011
Volume: 9
Issue: 2
Category: Environment
Pages: 718-723

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