Spatial variability of available soil microelements in an ecological functional zone of Beijing.

Understanding the spatial variability of soil microelements and its influencing factors is of importance for a number of applications such as scientifically formulated fertilizer and environmental protection. This study used descriptive statistics and geostatistics to investigate the spatial variability of available soil Fe, Mn, Cu, and Zn contents in agricultural topsoil (0-20 cm) in an ecological functional zone located at Yanqing County, Beijing, China. Kriging method was applied to map the spatial patterns of available soil Fe, Mn, Cu, and Zn contents. Results showed that the available soil Cu had a widest spatial correlation distance (e.g., 9.6 km), which for available soil Fe, Mn, and Zn were only 1.29, 2.58, and 0.99 km, respectively. The values of C 0/sill for available soil Fe and Zn were 0.12 and 0.11, respectively, demonstrating that the spatial heterogeneity was mainly due to structural factors. The available soil Mn and Cu had the larger values of C 0/sill (i.e., 0.50 and 0.44 for Mn and Cu, respectively), which showed a medium spatial correlation. Mapping of the spatial patterns of the four microelements showed that the decrease trend of available soil Fe and Mn were from northeast to southwest across the study area. The highest amount of available soil Cu was distributed in the middle of the study area surrounding urban region which presented as a "single island". The highest amount of available soil Zn was mainly distributed in the north and south of the study area. One-way analysis of variance for the influencing factors showed that the lithology of parental materials, soil organic matter, and pH were important factors affecting spatial variability of the available microelements. The topography only had a significant influence on the spatial variability of available soil Fe and Mn contents, parental materials, and the land use types had little influence on the spatial variability.