JWSS - Journal of Water and Soil Science

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The soil potassium status and effect of soil physical and chemical properties on it were investigated using 109 surface soils (0-30cm) from four regions in Guilan province. Neutral molar ammonium acetate extractable K (K-NH₄OAc), boiling molar nitric acid extractable K (K-HNO₃) and water soluble K were determined. Results showed that CEC and clay were normally frequency distributed while distribution frequency of other variables such as silt organic carbon and pH were not normal and have significant skew and kurtosis. In addition sand, K-NH₄OAc and K-HNO₃ has logarithmic normal distribution. Water-soluble potassium was affected by sand, pH, O.C and K-NH₄OAc (R²_a=0.73**). Ammonium extractable potassium was affected by soluble potassium, non-exchangeable potassium and CEC (R²_a=0.72**). Boiling nitric acid was affected by exchangeable potassium and silt (R²_a=0.55**). Geographic distribution of K-NH₄OAc data shows amount of it in central parts of Guilan, particularly Sepidrood river watershed is more than other regions. Fomanat region soils have the less clay, CEC, K-NH₄OAc and K-HNO₃. According this study about 68.8 percent of Guilan soils was classified in the range of medium to very low potassium status.

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Measuring the cation exchange capacity (CEC) as one of the most important chemical soil properties is very time consuming and costly. Pedotransfer functions (PTFs) provide an alternative to direct measurement by estimating CEC. The objective of this study was to develop PTFs for predicting CEC of Guilan province soils using artificial neural network (ANN) and multiple-linear regression method and also determine whether grouping based on soil textural class and organic carbon content improved estimating CEC by two methods. For this study, 1662 soil samples of Guilan province were used from soil chemistry laboratory database of Rice Research Institute. 1109 data were used for training (the development of PTFs) and 553 data for testing (the validation of PTFs) of the models. The results showed that organic carbon was the most important variable in the estimation of cation exchange capacity for total data and all classes in textural and organic C groups in both methods. ANN performed better than the regression method in predicting CEC in all data, and grouping of data only improved the prediction of PTFs in Sand and Sandy clay loam classes by ANN method.

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Intermittent irrigation of paddy fields with long intervals can cause cracks in heavy soils, facilitate loss of water and finally damage the crop. This study was carried out in order to investigate the cracking trend and some other factors affecting soil cracking in four different physiographical areas of paddy field. The study areas were Rasht, Shanderman, Astaneh and Khomam in Guilan province. The experiment was carried out in paddy fields with transplanted rice by determining the physical properties relevant to cracking behavior after irrigation withdrawal in the reproductive stage. Soil analysis showed that despite similarity in type of dominant minerals, the linear expansion coefficients of Rasht and Khomam soils were higher than those of two other areas. In addition, there was a significant relationship between crack dimensions and volumetric soil water content and clay content. Furthermore, the temporal variation in study of crack development (depth, width and density) showed that they varied in different areas and were affected by volumetric soil water content and the groundwater depth. In addition, the depth of cracks in all soils did not reach the hard pan. All the investigated soils showed a definite threshold for width and depth of cracks for 20-25 days after irrigation withdrawal. After this period, specific values for width (about 3.0, 2.0, 2.5, and 5.0 cm) and depth of cracks (20, 25, 17, and 27 cm) were registered for Astaneh, Khomam, Shanderman and Rasht, respectively