ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Land, Livelihoods and Food Security
This article is part of the Research TopicPhysiological Growth of Crops in Saline-Alkali Land and Its New Quality Productive Control MethodsView all 8 articles
Spatial Distribution Characteristics of soil salinity and nutrients in saline soil Based on a Farm Scale
Provisionally accepted
- 1Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao, China
- 2Science & Technology Specific Projects in Agricultural High-tech Industrial Demonstraion Area of the Yellow River Delat, Dongying City, China
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Soil salinity in the Yellow River Delta exhibits seasonal dynamics, with desalination in October (low-salt period) and salinity return in April (high-salt period). This study quantified the spatiotemporal variations in soil salinity, alkaline nitrogen (AN), available phosphorus (AP), and available potassium (AK) in mild saline soils (0-20 cm depth) at a 72.3 hm² farm scale using grid sampling, classical statistics, and geostatistics (semi-variance analysis, ordinary kriging). The key results showed that the mean soil salinity was higher in April than in October; all indices displayed moderate variability, where the coefficient of variation (CV) of salinity was higher in October than in April, while the CV values of AN, AP, and AK were lower in October than in April; salinity (in both periods), AK (in both periods), and AP (in October) exhibited weak spatial dependence (C₀/(C₀+C) > 75%) under the influence of random factors, and AN (in both periods) and AP (in April) showed moderate spatial dependence (25% < C₀/(C₀+C) < 75%) driven by both structural and random factors. Spatial distribution maps revealed patchy patterns, with salinity, AN, and AP contents being higher at field edges. In October, except for the southern part with high AK content, the AK content at the edges was lower than that in the central area; in April, AK was distributed in rings, and its content generally increased from the middle to the four sides. These high-resolution farm-scale study results provide data support for precise nutrient management of saline soils during low-salinity and high-salinity periods.
Keywords: Farm scale, Soil salinity, Soil nutrients, Spatial heterogeneity, Different periods
Received: 06 May 2025; Accepted: 24 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ma, Zhang, Zhang and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xinwei Liu, 200501065@qau.edu.cn
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