Comparing two different spatial interpolation approaches to characterize spatial variability of soil properties in Tuz Lake Basin - Turkey

The mam objective of this study is to compare the performance of two interpolation approaches, namely Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) and Ordinary Kriging (OK) methods, for mapping spatial distribution of soil characteristics including electrical conductivity (EC), organic matter, phosphorus, lime and boron in the Tuz Lake Basin of Turkey. A total number of 312 soil samples were used for analyses, in which 80% of the data was employed to generate interpolation models; whereas, the rest 20% was engaged for validation of the estimated outputs. Additionally, linear regression analysis was performed for further comparative evaluation. The results demonstrate that OK provided better results than IDW in estimating lime and EC parameters. On the other hand, IDW provided better results in estimating phosphorus, organic matter and boron. Both methods are useful to produce areal maps of the related soil parameters by using discrete number of point observations.