Assessment of soil fertility status in Paderu Mandal, Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh through Geospatial techniques

Abstract

82 soil samples were collected randomly at different land use/cover locations, which includes agriculture, forest, built up area, scrubland and plantation at a depth of 0–30 cm, analyzed for soil pH, electrical conductivity (EC) and presence of nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K). Inverse Distance Weightage method (IDW) was employed for analyzing the spatial distribution of soil fertility through geospatial techniques for sustainable agriculture. It is observed that soil pH varies between 4.8 and 7.5; showing nearly 83% of the study area is acidic in nature. The EC varies from 0.04 to 0.87 ds/m with a mean of 0.21 ds/m and non saline in condition. Out of 435 km2 of total study area, 99% of area is less in nitrogen followed by potassium (70%) and phosphorus (42%) respectively. Keywords: Soil fertility, Spatial distribution, Inverse Distance method, Sustainable agricultur