State space analysis of soil water content and textural fractions

Abstract

Soil textural fractions were measured jointly with soil water content (%) along 450 m transect in calcareous loamy (Torripasamments) at the College of Agriculture Experimental Station, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Soil samples were taken every 5 m along the transect. State space approach was used to analyze the two series of sand and water contents. The results indicate that the technique could be used to interpolate the sand percent values from soil water content data with very few measured data of sand percent. They indicate that 35 m distance between sand de terminations can be used to interpolate sand % for distance of 5 m apart. Using the state space approach with observed values at 35 m of sand % and at 5 of soil water content resulted a correlation coefficient of 0.89 of measured vs estimated sand % at a dis-tance of 5 m.