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A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Soil and Plant Nutrition".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 June 2023) | Viewed by 16872

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Xiaodong Song

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Guest Editor

Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Science, Nanjing 210008, China
Interests: digital soil mapping; Earth's Critical Zone; soil modeling
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Dr. Long Guo

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College of Resources and Environment & The Research Center of Territorial Spatial Governance and Green Development, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Interests: digital soil mapping; hyperspectral remote sensing images; soil modeling; soil and life
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Dr. Peng Fu

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Guest Editor

1. Center for Environment, Energy, and Economy, Harrisburg University, Harrisburg, PA 17101, USA
2. Department of Plant Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
Interests: environment change; precision agriculture; high throughput phenotyping; remote sensing; high performance computing; photosynthesis
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Dr. Shunhua Yang

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Guest Editor

State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
Interests: soil carbon and nitrogen cycling in Earth’s critical zone; digital soil mapping
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) was adopted at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York in September 2015, and it provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. The 17 SDGs are an urgent call for action by all countries—developed and developing—in a global partnership. Cultivated land is one of the most important land use types to support the survival and development of humans. Valuable agricultural productions and increasing income from cultivated lands can help improve the quality of our lives. Thus, the sustainable development of cultivated lands plays an important role in achieving the 17 SDGs. However, the spatial extent of cultivated lands is decreasing, and there are less than 1.5 billion hectares of cultivated lands, occupying only about 10% of the world’s total land area. Meanwhile, cultivated lands are suffering from low soil quality, degradation, soil contamination, salinization, and so on. Thus, it is a huge challenge to maintain the environmental health of cultivated lands, the high quality and yield of crop production, the beneficial agricultural management practices, and the sustainability of food production.

Therefore, this Special Issue will collect new developments and methodologies, best practices, and applications related to the science of cultivated land. We welcome submissions that provide the community with the most recent advancements in all aspects of soil, crop, agriculture, management and life, including but not limited to the following:

Crop monitoring
Fertilization management
Farmland management
Data processing, machine learning, and geostatistical and spatial analysis in agriculture science
Spatial and temporal changes in soil organic carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, heavy metals, salinity, and others in representative areas
The global cycle of soil carbon, nitrogen, and water
Digital soil mapping
The relationships between soil properties and human activities
Inversion of soil properties from single and/or multisource sensor-based data (e.g., multispectral, hyperspectral, thermal, LiDAR, SAR, gas, radioactivity sensors)
Climate modeling of soil systems
Soils for sustainable agriculture
Emerging approaches to characterizing soil carbon and greenhouse gas emissions
Soil biodiversity

Dr. Xiaodong Song
Dr. Long Guo
Dr. Peng Fu
Dr. Shunhua Yang
Guest Editors

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

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Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 1122 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Appraisal of Soil Taxonomy and the World Reference Base for Soil Resources Applied to Classify Purple Soils from the Eastern Sichuan Basin, China

by Qian Meng, Song Li, Bin Liu, Jin Hu, Junyan Liu, Yangyang Chen and En Ci

Agronomy 2023, 13(7), 1837; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13071837 - 11 Jul 2023

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1868

Abstract

Purple soil is a type of global soil that is referred to by various names in different countries, which makes it difficult to understand, utilize, and ameliorate purple soil internationally. Soil Taxonomy (ST) and the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB) are the most widely used soil classification systems in the world. The aim of this study was to clarify the classification of purple soil in ST and the WRB and to establish a reference between different classification systems of purple soil. Therefore, based on the current principles and methods of the ST and WRB systems, 18 typical purple soil profiles in the eastern Sichuan Basin were identified, retrieved, and classified. Then, the soil units of the WRB were compared with those of ST and the Chinese Soil Taxonomy (CST). The results revealed that the 18 typical purple soil profiles could be classified into three soil orders, four soil group orders, and seven soil subgroups in ST and four reference soil groups (RSGs) in the WRB; each profile had its own unique principal and supplementary qualifier combinations within the soil units. It was found that when compared with the ST system, the WRB and CST systems had stronger abilities to distinguish purple soil. In addition, the WRB system was able to more comprehensively consider soil characteristics such as soil layer thickness, ferric horizon, soil color, texture mutations, and carbonate through qualifiers. However, the CST system added diagnostic characteristics, such as the lithologic characteristics of purplish sandstones and shales and the ferric properties and alic properties at the soil group and subgroup levels, which enhanced the differentiation ability of the purple soil at the subgroup level. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cultivated Land Sustainability in the Anthropocene)

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23 pages, 7660 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Dominant Aggregate Binding Agent Dynamics of Quaternary Ancient Red Soils under Different Land Use Patterns

by Zhongxiu Sun, Siyi Duan, Yingying Jiang, Qiubing Wang and Ganlin Zhang

Agronomy 2023, 13(6), 1572; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13061572 - 9 Jun 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1759

Abstract

The cementation mechanisms and processes of aggregate binding agents are important in understanding aggregate formation. However, the role of threshold values and the proportions of organic and inorganic binding agents in aggregate formation remain unclear. This research investigated the dominant aggregate binding agent dynamics in a sequence comprising buried ancient red soil unaffected by modern climate changes and human activities, alongside nearby exposed Quaternary ancient red soils subjected to different land use patterns influenced by these factors in northeastern China. By analyzing soil age, aggregate compositions, and organic/inorganic indicators of binding agents, including soil organic matter (SOM), free iron oxide (Fed), poorly crystalline iron oxide (Feo), crystalline iron oxide (Fed-Feo), and total clay particles (TCL), we determined the relative contributions of different binding agents using redundancy analysis (RDA). The results revealed that the buried ancient red soil did not contain dominant binding agents in the aggregate formation before 91.01 ka BP. Due to denudation, the buried ancient red soil was exposed at the surface and experienced the importation of soil organic matter, weathering of silicate-bound iron oxides, and crystallization of poorly crystalline iron oxides resulting from the effects of different land use patterns from 91.01 ka to the present. Under the influence of binding agent dynamics, dominant binding agents in the exposed Quaternary ancient red soils’ aggregate formation changed into SOM and Fed. When the C/(Fed-Feo) molar ratio was less than 2.13, Fed-Feo was the dominant aggregate binding agent. When the C/(Fed-Feo) molar ratio was greater than 2.13, SOM was the dominant aggregate binding agent. The results of this study improve our understanding of aggregate formation and the relationship between soil organic matter and iron oxides. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cultivated Land Sustainability in the Anthropocene)

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15 pages, 3090 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A New Idea to Improve the Test Method of Soil Aggregate Stability for Soils with a Texture Gradient

by Jiangwen Li, Xihao Wei, Shouqin Zhong, En Ci and Chaofu Wei

Agronomy 2023, 13(5), 1192; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13051192 - 23 Apr 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1865

Abstract

It is of great significance to determine soil aggregate stability in predicting agricultural production conditions and soil erosion risk. However, the problem exposed in the process of evaluating soil aggregate stability cannot be ignored: Can the effects of different mechanisms on the degree of soil aggregate breakdown be distinguished by selecting ethanol and water as dispersion media? Based on this question, natural soils with a gradient in soil textures of silty loam to loamy clay were used as the test materials. Deionized water, ethanol and hexane were employed as soaking solutions to quantitatively analyze the extent to which the aggregates were dispersed in static disintegration experiments. The results suggested that the soil hydrophilicity (SH) of six soils with a texture gradient were >1 by comparing the aggregate breakdown index (ABI) of soils undergoing ethanol and hexane dispersion. This indicated that the hydrophilic group (-OH) contained in ethanol interacted with the hydrophilic surfaces of the soil particles. Therefore, the soil hydrophilicity (hydration) should be determined by comparing the ABI values undergoing hexane and water dispersion. From silty loam to loamy clay, the average contribution of hydration to aggregate fragmentation decreases, and the process of aggregate breakdown with different textures is characterized by size selectivity. When the soil aggregates were fragmented into 2–0.25 mm aggregate fractions, for silty loam and sandy clay loam, 0.002–0.02 mm and <0.002 mm particles were preferentially moved; for clay loam and loamy clay, >0.002 mm particles were preferentially moved. When the soil aggregates were fragmented into <0.25 mm aggregate fractions for soils with different textures, the 0.002–0.02 mm and <0.002 mm particles all exhibited preferential migration characteristics. This work provides an idea for improving the methods of aggregate stability measurements in the future. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cultivated Land Sustainability in the Anthropocene)

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18 pages, 21409 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spatial Variation in Soil Base Saturation and Exchangeable Cations in Tropical and Subtropical China

by Jing Zhang, Xiaolin Qu, Xiaodong Song, Ying Xiao, Anqi Wang and Decheng Li

Agronomy 2023, 13(3), 781; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13030781 - 8 Mar 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2879

Abstract

In the last 30 years, severe soil acidification has been found in China due to acid deposition and nitrogen fertilizer overuse. Understanding the spatial pattern and vertical variations in base saturation percentage (BSP) and exchangeable cations (Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺, K⁺, Na⁺, H⁺ and Al³⁺) can directly benefit fertilization management and ecological protection. Here, 1253 soil profiles were surveyed in tropical and subtropical regions in China to investigate the spatial variations in BSP and exchangeable cations at three soil depths of 0–20 cm, 20–50 cm and 50–100 cm. The spatial distributions were interpolated by using advanced machine learning techniques. We found that the exchangeable Ca²⁺ (Exch. Ca), Mg²⁺ (Exch. Mg) and BSP were significantly higher in paddy fields and uplands than in forests and gardens, regardless of soil depth, while the exchangeable K (Exch. K) did not significantly differ between various land-use types. The Exch. Ca and BSP in Anthrosols were significantly higher than those in Ferrosols, Argosols and Cambosols in the three soil layers. The spatial prediction results indicated that exchangeable cations and BSP were generally characterized by strong heterogeneity, and the Exch. Ca, Exch. K and exchangeable H⁺ (Exch. H) contents and BSP declined with increasing soil depth. This study helps us understand the spatial variation in BSP and exchangeable cations in the study area and benefits fertilization management and environmental protection. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cultivated Land Sustainability in the Anthropocene)

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16 pages, 3730 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Cation Exchange Properties of Subsurface Soil in Mid-Subtropical China: Variations, Correlation with Soil-Forming Factors, and Prediction

by Ningxiang Ouyang, Pengbo Zhang, Yangzhu Zhang, Hao Sheng, Qing Zhou, Yunxiang Huang and Zhan Yu

Agronomy 2023, 13(3), 741; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13030741 - 1 Mar 2023

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2437

Abstract

Soil cation exchange property (SCEP) is important in soil development and environmental buffering. However, the variations in SCEP and its correlation with soil-forming factors in subsurface soil are not fully understood. In this study, we quantified the surface and subsurface SCEP variations as a function of parent material, vegetation, hillslope position, and soil type. Fifty upland soil profiles from mid-subtropical China were selected. The cation exchange capacity (CEC) and effective CEC (ECEC) of subsurface soil were significantly higher in soils derived from slate, Quaternary red clay (QRC), and limestone than in soils derived from granite and sandstone. The subsurface soils derived from limestone had the highest base saturation (BS) and the sum of base cations, and the lowest aluminum (Al) saturation. The SCEP in surface soil significantly varied with vegetation and hillslope position. The surface soil CEC was the highest in mixed-forest vegetation, whereas the ECEC and exchangeable acidity (EA) were the highest in arable vegetation. Exchangeable potassium (K⁺) was lowest and the EA was highest in soil orders at the strong development phase. Exchangeable calcium (Ca²⁺), magnesium (Mg²⁺), CEC, and BS were the highest in soil orders at the intermediate development phase. The prediction accuracy of soil CEC using the random forest model was higher than that obtained using multiple stepwise regression, with the best results (R² = 0.92) obtained in the surface soil. Our study indicated that the SCEP in surface and subsurface soils was controlled by different soil-forming factors and could be effectively predicted by soil properties in subtropical China. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cultivated Land Sustainability in the Anthropocene)

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19 pages, 1292 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Leaf Nitrogen and Phosphorus Stoichiometry and Its Response to Geographical and Climatic Factors in a Tropical Region: Evidence from Hainan Island

by Jingjing Wang, Yongyi Liang, Guoan Wang, Xiaoyan Lin, Jiexi Liu, Hao Wang, Zixun Chen and Bingsun Wu

Agronomy 2023, 13(2), 411; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13020411 - 30 Jan 2023

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1934

Abstract

Leaf stoichiometry effectively indicates the response and adaptation of plants to environmental changes. Although numerous studies on leaf stoichiometry patterns have focused on the mid-latitudes and specific species of plants, these patterns and the effect of the climate change on them across a broad range of plants have remained poorly characterized in hot and humid regions at low latitudes. In the present study, leaf N, P, N:P, C:N, and C:P ratios, were determined from 345 plant leaf samples of 268 species at four forest sites in Hainan Island, China. For all plants, leaf N (3.80 ± 0.20 mg g⁻¹) and P (1.82 ± 0.07 mg g⁻¹) were negatively correlated with latitude and mean annual temperature (MAT) but were positively correlated with longitude. Leaf N was found to be positively correlated with altitude (ALT), and leaf P was positively correlated with mean annual precipitation (MAP). The leaf C:N ratio (278.77 ± 15.86) was significantly correlated with longitude and ALT, leaf C:P ratio (390.69 ± 15.15) was significantly correlated with all factors except ALT, and leaf N:P ratio (2.25 ± 0.10) was significantly correlated with ALT, MAT, and MAP. Comparable results were observed for woody plants. The results suggest that leaf stoichiometry on Hainan Island is affected by changes in geographical and climatic factors. In addition, the low N:P ratio indicates that plant growth may be limited by N availability. Moreover, the significant correlation between leaf N and P implies a possible synergistic relationship between N and P uptake efficiency in the plants of this region. This study helps to reveal the spatial patterns of leaf stoichiometry and their response to global climate change in a variety of plants in tropical regions with hot and humid environments, which may provide an insight in nutrient management in tropical rainforest. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cultivated Land Sustainability in the Anthropocene)

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28 pages, 13310 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Extraction of Information on the Flooding Extent of Agricultural Land in Henan Province Based on Multi-Source Remote Sensing Images and Google Earth Engine

by Jiaqi Cui, Yulong Guo, Qiang Xu, Donghao Li, Weiqiang Chen, Lingfei Shi, Guangxing Ji and Ling Li

Agronomy 2023, 13(2), 355; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13020355 - 26 Jan 2023

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2813

Abstract

Sudden flood disasters cause serious damage to agricultural production. Rapidly extracting information such as the flooding extent of agricultural land and capturing the influence of flooding on crops provides important guidelines for estimating the flood-affected area, promoting post-disaster farmland restoration, and providing an auxiliary decision-making basis for flood prevention and disaster relief departments. Taking the flood event in Henan and Shanxi Provinces as example, based on the characteristics of the variations in radar data and optical data before and after the disaster, we propose an extent information extraction method for the flood inundation area and the flood-affected area of agricultural land. This method consists of change detection, threshold extraction, and superposition analysis, which weakens the negative impact of the radar data speckle noise and cloud contamination of the optical data on the extraction of the agricultural land flooding to a certain extent. The method was developed based on a flood event in Henan Province and validated in Shanxi Province. The results show that the production of this method have a clear boundary and accurate extent, and the overall precisions of the flood inundation area and flood-affected area extraction are 0.87 and 0.92, respectively. The proposed method combines the advantages of both radar and optical remote sensing data in extracting the specific extents of the flood inundation area and the flood-affected area in large spatial scale. Finally, the impact of time window size to the performance of the method is further analyzed. In the application of the proposed method, the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform provides a low-cost, fast, and convenient way to extract flood information from remote sensing data. The proposed scheme provides a scientific data basis for restoring production of agricultural land after a flood disaster, as well as for national post-disaster damage assessment and disaster relief decision making. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cultivated Land Sustainability in the Anthropocene)

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