Publication Date: 2023/10/05
Abstract: This study assessed soil pH and organic matter in central and southern zones of Plateau state. Stratified random sampling method was adopted for collecting the soil samples, and a total of 736 samples covering the total area were collected. The physico-chemical characteristics of the soil samples were analyzed at the laboratory of the Centre for Dry Land Agriculture (CDA) located within Bayero University Kano (BUK) in Nigeria. The soil pH and organic matter values for the collected soil samples were determined by Potentiometric 1:2 pH-m and Walkely and Black methods respectively. The values of the parameters were entered in attribute table and linked with the ArcGIS 10.8 to develop a relational database.The investigation involved employing the Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) interpolation method to create a spatial representation of soil pH and organic matter distribution.The investigation also involved conducting Pearson's product moment correlation analysis between soil pH and organic matter across multiple soil sample locations, utilizing SPSS version 25, a statistical software package. The result obtained for the correlation co-efficient γ is –0.071 and the p-value is 0.055 using 0.01 level of significance showed that; the association or relationship between soil pH and organic matter is weak, since 0.071 is less than 0.3, they have a negative relationship, which means that they move in an opposite direction, and that an increase in soil organic matter leads to a decrease in soil pH and vice versa; the association between the two variables (soil pH and organic matter) is insignificant, since the p-value 0.055 is greater than the level of significance + 0.01. The study recommends that farmers should be discouraged from the slash and burn practice which does not allow for the decomposition of organic material to enhance the organic matter content of the soil.
Keywords: Soil pH; Organic Matter; Correlation; Spatial Analysis.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8434174
PDF: https://ijirst.demo4.arinfotech.co/assets/upload/files/IJISRT23SEP1492.pdf
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