Determination and modelling of soil properties of degreaded forest and grassland areas in some micro catchments of Artvin, Erzurum and Bayburt using satellite images

The objectives of the present study were (i) determine and compare some physical and chemical soil properties of different land uses in Coruh River Basin according to Erinç's climate classes, and (ii) modeling them using satellite data and some ecological factors. For these purposes, stratified random sampling was first carried out based on the rehabilitation areas for degraded forest and grassland of 12 micro-catchments determined within the Coruh River Basin Rehabilitation Project. Then, a total of 878 soil samples (471 in 0-15 cm depth and 407 in 15-30 depth) were taken from 471 sampling points (316 in degraded forest, 155 in grassland) the depths of 0-15 and 15-30 cm. And than, soil texture, reaction and erodibility (K) factor were estimated using band values of Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS satellite data, remote sensing indices and ecological factors as well. Stepwise method of multiple linear regression analysis was used for modeling. The main results of the statistical analysis and the model outputs were as follows; 1. Some soil properties showed statistically significant differences according to land use and climate classes in micro-cathmens (p<0.05). 2. The coefficients of determination (R2) for the developed models range from 0.17 to 0.61 for sand, from 0.21 to 0.77 for clay, from 0.11 to 0.42 for silt, from 0.14 to 0.38 for lime, from 0.28 to 0.68 for soil reaction, from 0.23 to 0.66 for K-factor, from 0.35 to 0.45 for dispersion ratio, from 0.19 to 0.48 for clay ratio, from 0.07 to 0.33 for bulk density. 3. Our results suggest that some of the soil properties can be estimated by using remote sensing data and ecological factors.