A method of capability evaluation for upland soils

As one of the important capability determinants of upland soils, fertility was taken up as the object of evaluation in this study.

On the basis of correlation analysis, factor analysis (FA) was applied to a set of 12 variates (humus, total nitrogen, available nitrogen, clay. sand, total phosphorus, Bray-P. HC1-P, CEC, percentage base saturation. exchangeable calcium, and pH).

Four mutually independent and clearly definable fertility component factors were consistently extracted from the 12 variates for the entire set of 94 surface soil samples and for different strata of the samples. The fertility status of each sample soil could be objectively designated by the scores of the four factors.

As a means of summarizing the information obtained, taxonomic distances between all pairs of the samples were computed from these 4 factor scores and subjected to numerical taxonomy. Six fertility groups were formulated, each of which was characterized by one or more of the fertility components. This fertility classification based on the present state of soil properties could be of use in pointing to the proper direction of fertility amelioration and improvement for each group of Boils.