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Journal of Central European Agriculture, Vol. 22 No. 3, 2021.

Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.5513/JCEA01/22.3.3193

Predicting soil organic matter content using soil color at three locations with different land use in Zagreb (Croatia)

Vedran RUBINIĆ orcid id orcid.org/0000-0003-2187-6952 ; University of Zagreb Faculty of Agriculture, Svetošimunska 25, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
Alan PAVLOVIĆ ; Student at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Agriculture, Svetošimunska 25, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
Ivan MAGDIĆ ; University of Zagreb Faculty of Agriculture, Svetošimunska 25, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia

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Abstract

Soil organic matter (SOM) plays a key role in ecosystems. Reduction of its content due to land-use changes has a negative impact on the soil, but also on the wider environment. Accordingly, SOM content is routinely analyzed in the laboratory. As these are expensive and/or time-consuming, indirect ones are also tested. The aim of this study was to examine the possibility of predicting SOM content by linear regression using soil color as the predictor, at three locations in Zagreb (Croatia), with different soil types (eutric cambisol anthropogenic, humofluvisol, pseudogley) and different land uses (plough land, meadow, forest, respectively). At each location, 5 samples of the surface soil layer were taken. Soil color was determined using the Munsell system, and the hue was 2.5Y and 10YR in dry and moist soil, respectively. Laboratory analyzes showed that the soils are very acid to neutral silt loams. In line with the land-use, they differed significantly in SOM content and were poorly humic (plough land), moderately to highly humic (meadow), and highly humic (forest).
Correlation between soil color dimensions and SOM content was significant only for the dry samples, between chroma
and SOM and between value/chroma ratio and SOM. Regression analysis showed high coefficients of determination for
these two relationships (R2 = 0.88 for chroma-SOM, R2 = 0.76 for value/chroma-SOM). The results suggest that visual
soil color determination can be used to estimate SOM content, but only in dry soil. The model calibrated in this paper
needs to be validated using samples of other (different) soils.

Keywords

humus; Munsell color system; linear regression; pedotransfer function

Hrčak ID:

262602

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/262602

Publication date:

19.9.2021.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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