Abstract

AIMETTA, Maria Bethania et al. Quantifying agriculture use in saline and sodic soils using NDVI index. Cienc. suelo [online]. 2020, vol.38, n.1, pp.174-186. ISSN 1850-2067.

In recent years, agriculture has advanced in saline or sodic soils previously dedicated to livestock in the Central Pampas of Argentina; however the proportion of crops grown on these soils has not yet been determined, and NDVI index may help in estimating this area. The objectives of this work were to (i) estimate the area occupied by saline and / or sodic soils and (ii) quantify the proportion of these soils planted with crops in southeast Córdoba province. For this purpose, the soil characterization (saline, sodium and saline-sodium) and the degree of constraints (mild, moderate and strong) were incorporated in soil maps, at a scale of 1: 50000. Then, the area covered with maize, wheat and soybean was estimated using the NDVI index from Landsat 8 OLI satellite images for the 2016-2017 season. Finally, a geographical process was carried out integrating soil information with cropped area. Saline and sodic soils occupied 30 and 48% of total area of Marcos Juárez and Unión counties respectively. In both, 38% of soils with limitations were planted with soybean, maize or wheat. On average, 19,5% of the area in these soils was covered with soybean, 10% with corn and 9% with wheat. The proportion of these three crops on saline and sodic soils represented 17% and 29% of the sown area in Marcos Juárez and Unión counties, respectively. These results demonstrate a significant proportion of saline and/or sodic soils under agricultural use, being necessary to adjust management technologies for optimizing input use efficiency in these environments.

Keywords : Soil maps; geographic information systems; soybean; corn; wheat.

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