Research Article

Soil Quality Assessment Strategies for Evaluating Soil Degradation in Northern Ethiopia

Table 5

Soil quality indices developed using a PCA selected dataset to compare eight LUSMS in the Mai-Negus catchment of northern Ethiopia.

LUSMSUnscreened SQIPCA-SQI
LSFaNLSFaLSFNLSFMeanb
ILIIL IIILINIINILIILIIILINIIN

LS10.913a0.941a0.899a0.956a0.953a0.913a0.925a0.881a0.973a0.964a0.932a
LS20.823a0.843a0.793b0.920a0.916a0.826b0.845a0.795b0.928a0.921a0.861a
LS30.621bc0.659b0.626c0.747bcd0.741bcd0.619c0.658b0.593c0.773bc0.754bc0.679b
LS40.648b0.673b0.627c0.780bc0.777bc0.618c0.608bc0.587c0.774bc0.772bc0.686b
LS50.539cd0.582bc0.522d0.689cd0.686cd0.484d0.535cd0.470d0.696cd0.692cd0.589c
LS60.506d0.532cd0.510d0.655de0.652de0.463d0.514d0.453d0.656d0.653d0.559c
LS70.639b0.676b0.660c0.787b0.784b0.597c0.638b0.591c0.791b0.781b0.694b
LS80.410e0.475d0.405e0.562e0.559e0.347e0.418e0.341e0.513e0.546e0.458d
mean0.6370.6720.6300.7620.7590.6090.6420.5890.7630.7600.682

LSD ( )0.0950.0990.0910.0970.0960.0860.0820.0760.0890.0890.083

Means followed by different letters in the same column are significantly different at ; LSD: least significance difference.
Details of LSF and NLSF descriptions can be found in Section 2.4 (Step 2).
This shows overall mean of the different scoring and indexing methods across the columns for the same LUSMS as tested statistically.
LSF: linear scoring function; NLSF: nonlinear scoring function; IL: Liebig method LSF; IIL: Homothetic transformation method of LSF; IIIL: Glover method LSF; IN: CurveExpert method NLSF; IIN: Glover method NLSF; LUSMS: land use and soil management systems; SQI: soil quality index; PCA: principal component analysis; LS1: natural forest (reference); LS2: plantation of protected area; LS3: pasture land system; LS4: teff-faba bean rotation; LS5: teff-barley/wheat rotation; LS6: teff-monocropping; LS7: Maize monocropping; LS8: uncultivated-marginal land soil system.