Spatial Variability of Soil Water and Salt Characteristics in the Yellow River Delta

The spatial variability of soil salinity,pH and moisture in the surface layer of the Yellow River Delta was analyzed by using traditional statistics and geo-statistics.The results indicate that soil salinity was generally high and showed the trend of alkalization to some extent,the variation in salinity and moisture was moderate while the variation in pH was rather weak.Soil salinity,pH and moisture all exhibited moderate spatial autocorrelation resulting from compound effect of structural and stochastic factors.Fractal dimension and Moran′s I coefficient both proved that soil salinity,pH and moisture showed weak spatial dependency,and stochastic factors were the crucial reason of resulting in the spatial heterogeneity of salinity,pH and moisture.The Kriging interpolation and correlation analysis showed that the distribution of soil salinity was inversely correlated with that of pH,and soil salinity showed negatively significant correlation with both pH and moisture,which signified that excessive salinity contributed to pH decrease and moisture could provide a reference for the diagnosis of salinity in the surface layer during the drought season.