SCHRIFTENREIHE Institut für Pflanzenernährung und Bodenkunde ...

Chapter 3 Spatio-temporal variability of soil moisture in grazed steppe areas investigated by geostatistics
Variance (%) 2
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
UG 79 UG 99 WG CG HG
R=0.34 R=0.67 R=0.79 R=0.46 R=0.78
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Mean (%)
Fig. 3.3. Correlations of variance to mean soil moisture content for five plots.
35 40
3.2. Factors controlling the Spatio-temporal patterns of soil moisture
A correlation matrix between SWC and potentially associated properties for
the different soil water statuses (wet, medium and dry) is shown in Table 4. For
most grazing intensities and water statuses, a significant relationship between
SWC and associated properties (e.g. soil texture, soil organic carbon (SOC) and
bulk density) was found. For UG 99, CG and HG, there was a significant
negative correlation between either sand content or bulk density and SWC.
These results are supported by other studies that also found SWC to be
correlated to soil texture and bulk density (Henninger et al., 1976; Gomez-Plaza
et al., 2001). A similar trend was not found for WG and UG 79, however,
probably because of the weak spatial dependency of SWC (Table 3).
51