Assessing spatial variability of soil enzyme activities in pasture topsoils using geostatistics [An article from: European Journal of Soil Biology]

This digital document is a journal article from European Journal of Soil Biology, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
The purpose of this study was to assess the spatial variability of the activity of three hydrolytic enzymes, i.e. urease activity (UAc), alkaline phosphatase activity (APAc), and arylsulfatase activity (ASAc), in pasture topsoils using geostatistics. Enzyme activities along a transect in a 1.35-ha pasture were determined using 77 soil samples from the upper 20 cm of soil. UAc varied from 101.0 to 182.7 @mg N g^-^1 soil h^-^1; APAc varied from 1.56 to 3.62 @mg p-nitrophenol g^-^1 soil h^-^1; and ASAc varied from 1.50 to 3.26 @mg p-nitrophenol g^-^1 soil h^-^1. The linear models fit the best semivariogram models for UAc, APAc, and ASAc. Semivariograms for enzyme activities exhibited spatial dependence with ranges of influence of approximately 124.7 m.