Soil Properties of a Tropical Savannah in the Eastern Ghats of India

Abstract

As an outcome of globalization and liberalization of economic policies, exploration for and mining of minerals have become one of the recent lucrative trades in India. Due to stringent environment legislations, reclamation and reforestation of the mined out sites have become obligatory. Information on distribution of nutrients before and after mining provides valuable insights while developing and executing the strategy for reclamation and revegetation of the mined out sites. Successful mine reclamation plan chiefly requires information on the soil characteristics in the area during its natural state. With this aim, investigations into spatial and temporal variations in soil nutrients and other physicochemical parameters among three proposed bauxite mine locations near Araku valley, India were conducted. Soil samples were collected every three months for two years. At each location, samples from three sites in triplicates from four successive layers (0 -5 cm, 5 -10 cm, 10 -15 cm and 15 -20 cm depth) were collected.

Status and distribution of soil fertility under different domains of central India

“…Soil reaction is prime importance in controlling the availability of nutrients, since it affects directly their solubility as well as activity in the soil environment. The similar results were obtained at another palace by Chandra et al (2012) [5] , Mukherjee and Lal (2014) [17] and Cherubin et al (2016) [6] .…”

Spatial variability of topsoil chemical properties

“…Iron oxide has a correlation of 0.5 with P. OM has positive correlation of 0.2 and 0.1 with P and K respectively. whereas, Chandra et al (2012) observed a correlation of 0.25. Positive correlation of 0.2 is observed between pH and P (Chandra et al, 2012).…”

“…whereas, Chandra et al (2012) observed a correlation of 0.25. Positive correlation of 0.2 is observed between pH and P (Chandra et al, 2012). EC and Ca have positive correlation of 0.3 (Chaudhari et al, 2012).…”