Spatial variability of soil chemical attributes in Conilon coffee plantation: relationships with soil texture, organic matter and relief

Chemical properties are related to other soil attributes, including geomorphology, and constitute one of the factors that control spatial variability. The objective of this work was to evaluate the variability of soil chemistry and how it is interrelated with granulometric size fractions and organic soil components. Geostatistics and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were used to describe the influence of topography. Spatial variability was more influenced by topography at lower depths. The PCA technique showed that attributes associated with soil reactions (pH, Ca, Mg, Al, V and m) contributed to the first principal component (PC1) at the two studied depths. Only PC1 at the 0.0-0.1 m depth was, however, correlated to topography; higher altitudes and smaller slopes favored higher clay content and lower coarse sand proportion, thus resulting in increased retention of cations in the soil. The humic substances of organic matter have low influence on the variability of the chemical attributes, with the exception of Ca and Mg that are well related to humic acids in sites that are richer in sand. Homogeneous areas correlated with geomorphologic attributes was been describe for the K concentrations compared to other attributes at both depths. Thus, the use of spatial analysis for landscape stratification in homogeneous regions for the purpose of fertilizer management depends not only on topography, but on the chemical attributes evaluated and on sample depth.