Spatio-temporal soil quality assessment under crop rotation irrigated with treated urban wastewater using fuzzy modelling

Quantifying soil quality is important for asses- sing soil management practices effects on spatial and temporal variability of soil quality at the field scale. We studied the pos- sibility of defining a simple and practical fuzzy soil quality index based on biological, chemical and physical indicators for assessing quality variations of soil irrigated with well water and treated urban wastewater during two experimental years. In this study 6 proper- ties considered as minimum data set were selected out of 18 soil properties as total data set using the principal component analysis. Treated urban wastewater use had greater impact on biological and chemical quality. The results showed that the studied minimum data set could be a suitable representative of total data set. Significant correlation between the fuzzy soil quality index and crop yield (R 2 = 0.72) indicated the index had high biological significance for studied area. Fuzzy soil quality index approach (R 2 = 0.99) could be effectively utilized as a tool leading to better understanding soil quality changes. This is a first trial of creation of a universal index of soil quality undertaken.