Evaluation of soil quality on gully region of loess plateaubased on principal component analysis
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DOI:10.7606/j.issn.1000-7601.2010.03.26
Key Words: principal component analysis  MDS  weight  soil quality assessment
Author NameAffiliation
HUANG Ting Northwest A & F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China 
YUE Xijie Northwest A & F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China 
GE Xizu Northwest A & F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China 
WANG Xudong Northwest A & F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China 
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Abstract:
      In this paper, we made the Loess Plateau of Changwu County in Shaanxi Province as the research object. The principal component analysis (PCA) combined with Norm values were employed to select the indexes and establish the minimum data set (MDS), in which 12 indexes such as labile organic matter, total nitrogen, available phosphorus, potassium, clay, CEC, catalase and phosphatase enzyme were selected as representatives for calculating soil quality in-dex. Two kinds of weight coefficients were determined by using objective method from PCA and a combination of subjec-tive and objective methods respectively, and soil quality index was calculated . The results showed that the soil quality in-dex calculated by two kinds of weight coefficients had a good consistency. In addition, the soil quality index calculated by the PCA method was correlated to that calculated by the integrated partial correlation coefficient method , indicating that PCA is suitable for soil quality assessment in this region. Values of membership functions of the index revealed that labile organic matter is a major limited factor in this region, and the total nitrogen is the second. Soil quality index calcu-lated by diferent methods all showed that soil quality of the orchard is better than that of farmland, and soil quality in different landform positions is in the order of table-land > slope-land > bottom-land.