TITLE:
Predicting Base Saturation Percentage by pH—A Case Study of Red Soil Series in South China
AUTHORS:
Anqi Wang, Bing Ju, Decheng Li
KEYWORDS:
pH, Base Saturation Percentage (BSP), Correlation Model, Red Soil Series, Fujian, Guangdong, South China
JOURNAL NAME:
Agricultural Sciences,
Vol.10 No.4,
April
19,
2019
ABSTRACT: pH and base saturation percentage (BSP) are two basic indexes in identifying soil types in Chinese Soil Taxonomy. Some studies proved that there is significant correlation between BSP and pH, thus it could save the cost of laboratory work if we can infer BSP directly from pH. In this study, the measured values of BSP and pH of 162 and 232 horizon samples from 48 and 55 red soil series surveyed from 2009 to 2011 in Fujian and Guangdong respectively were adopted from Soil Series Database to set up the optimal correlation model between BSP and pH. The results showed that: 1) BSP ranged from 2.30% to 94.02% with a mean of 25.07%, while pH from 3.42 to 6.91 with a mean of 4.98 for the total soil samples. 2) There were significant differences in pH between different soil types (R2 were 0.624 for Ferralosols, 0.507 for Ferrosols, 0.515 for Argosols, and 0.456 for Cambosols, p 2 were 0.580 for Quaternary red clay, 0.434 for granite, 0.642 for sandstone, and 0.712 for basalt, p 2 were 0.623 for dryland, and 0.404 for forest land, p 0), their probability density curves were mainly in flat or normal curves (y = 6.84x2 − 45.86x + 81.52, R2 = 0.494, p