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Journal of Arid Land  2012, Vol. 4 Issue (4): 441-449    DOI: 10.3724/SP.J.1227.2012.00441
Research Articles     
Spatial distribution of soil moisture, salinity and organic matter in Manas River watershed, Xinjiang, China
Jilili ABUDUWAILI1, Yang TANG1, Mireban ABULIMITI2, DongWei LIU3, Long MA1
1 State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sci-ences, Urumqi 830011, China;
2 College of Resources and Environmental Science, Xinjiang University, Urumqi 830011, China;
3 Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot 010021, China
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Abstract  With the classical statistical and geostatistical methods, the study of the spatial distribution and its in-fluence factors of soil water, salinity and organic matter was carried out for 0–70 cm soil layers in Manas River watershed. The results showed that the soil moisture data from all soil layers exhibited a normal distribution, with average values of 14.08%–21.55%. Geostatistical analysis revealed that the content of soil moisture had a moder-ate spatial autocorrelation with the ratios of nugget/sill ranging from 0.500 to 0.718, which implies that the spatial pattern of soil moisture is influenced by the combined effects of structural factors and random factors. Remarkable spatial distributions with stripped and mottled features were found for soil moisture in all different soil layers. The landform and crop planting had a relatively big influence on the spatial distribution of soil moisture; total soil salinity was high in east but low in west, and non-salinized soil and lightly salinized soil appeared at the northwest and southwest of the study area. Under the effect of reservoir leakage, the heavily salinized soils are widely distributed in the middle of the study area. The areas of the non-salinized and lightly salinized soils decreased gradually with soil depth increment, which is contrary to the case for saline soils that reached a maximum of 245.67 km2 at the layer of 50–70 cm. The types of soil salinization in Manas River watershed were classified into four classes: the sulfate, chloride-sulfate, sulfate-chloride and chloride. The sulfate salinized soil is most widely distributed in the surface layer. The areas of chloride-sulfate, sulfate-chloride, and chloride salinized soils increased gradually along with the increment of soil depth; the variation range of the average values of soil organic matter content was be-tween 7.48%–11.33%. The ratios of nugget/sill reduced gradually from 0.698 to 0.299 with soil depth increment, which shows that the content of soil organic matter has a moderate spatial autocorrelation. The soil organic matter in all soil layers met normal distribution after logarithmic transformation. The spatial distribution patterns of soil or-ganic matter and soil moisture were similar; the areas with high organic matter contents were mainly distributed in the south of the study area, with the lowest contents in the middle.

Key wordssandy grassland      grazing disturbance      topographic variation      seed density      species richness      scale dependence      Inner Mongolia     
Received: 12 March 2012      Published: 15 December 2012
Fund:  

The National Basic Research Program of China (2009CB825101) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41071139).

Corresponding Authors:
Cite this article:

Jilili ABUDUWAILI, Yang TANG, Mireban ABULIMITI, DongWei LIU, Long MA. Spatial distribution of soil moisture, salinity and organic matter in Manas River watershed, Xinjiang, China. Journal of Arid Land, 2012, 4(4): 441-449.

URL:

http://jal.xjegi.com/10.3724/SP.J.1227.2012.00441     OR     http://jal.xjegi.com/Y2012/V4/I4/441

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