Publication date: November 2014
Source:Geoderma, Volumes 232–234
Author(s): Vincent de Paul Obade , Rattan Lal
The conflicting information on the impacts of management on spatial and temporal soil quality changes necessitates a comprehensive approach that can combine soil property data into a credible soil quality index. Thus, a field study was conducted to demonstrate an application of meta-analytic methods to integrate and quantitatively describe the effects of management practices on key soil physical and chemical properties which influence soil quality. Soil samples were obtained during spring 2012 from 5 sites within Ohio, USA, at a similar landscape position under conventional tillage (CT), no-till (NT), and natural vegetation (NV) land uses. Soil samples from 0–10, 10–20, 20–40, and 40–60b ), available water capacity (AWC), electrical conductivity (EC), and pH. These data were compared using analyses of variance (ANOVA), and the Odds Ratio (OR) from the DerSimonian-Liard (DSL) meta-analysis model. The OR is the ratio of a statistical test being positive relative to being falsely positive. There were significant differences in the soil properties for each site, depth, management, except for AWC and pH which were similar under three land uses and management. The SOC, pH, EC did not vary with siteb (0.84), and AWC (0.69). However, the OR for EC followed an opposite trend, being higher in soil under CT than NT (1.36). Based on the meta-analyses which provide a systematic comparative assessment within the whole profile, the data support the conclusion that soils under CT are of a relatively lower quality than those under NT because they have lower SOC and AWC, but higher EC.
Source:Geoderma, Volumes 232–234
Author(s): Vincent de Paul Obade , Rattan Lal