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Acta Geophysica

, Volume 67, Issue 4, pp 1107–1118 | Cite as

Temporal stability of soil apparent electrical conductivity (ECa) in managed podzols

  • Emmanuel Badewa
  • Adrian Unc
  • Mumtaz Cheema
  • Lakshman GalagedaraEmail author
Research Article - Applied Geophysics
First Online:

Abstract

The spatial variability in soil physical and hydraulic properties for a managed podzol was assessed using soil apparent electrical conductivity (ECa). Two EMI sensors, the multi-coil (MC) and multi-frequency (MF), were adopted for measurement of ECa on a silage- corn experimental plot in western Newfoundland, Canada. Results demonstrated a significant relationship between the ECa mean relative differences (MRD) and the soil moisture content MRD (R2 = 0.33 to 0.70) for both MC and MF sensors. The difference in depth sensitivity between MC and MF sensors accounted for the variation (0.015 to 0.09) in ECa standard deviation of the relative differences. A significant linear relationship was found between the ECa MRD and sand (R2 = 0.35 and 0.53) or silt (R2 = 0.43), but not with clay (R2 = 0.06 and 0.16). The spatial variability of the ECa-based predictions (CV = 3.26 to 27.61) of soil properties was lower than the measured values (CV = 5.56 to 41.77). These results inferred that the temporal stability of ECa might be a suitable proxy to understand the spatial variability of soil physical and hydraulic properties in agricultural podzols.

Keywords

Electromagnetic induction Multi-coil Multi-frequency Soil moisture content Spatial variability 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

Financial supports from the Research and Development Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador (Ignite R&D 5404-1962-101) and the Research Office of Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland are greatly appreciated. Department of Fisheries and Land Resources of the Government of Newfoundland provided the study site. An MSc-BEAS graduate fellowship from Memorial University to E. Badewa, and data-collection support by Marli Vermooten, Dinushika Wanniarachchi and Kamaleswaran Sadatcharam are acknowledged.

Compliance with ethical standards

Conflict of interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

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Copyright information

© Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences & Polish Academy of Sciences 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.School of Science and the EnvironmentGrenfell Campus, Memorial University of NewfoundlandCorner BrookCanada

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