spatial variability of soil macrofauna biomass and soil properties in riparian forest of karkhe river

abstract soil invertebrate and their spatial pattern are affected strongly by environmental factors. spatial variability of soil properties is one of the most important reasons of the macrofauna variability. this study was conducted to investigate the spatial variability of soil properties and soil macrofauna biomass in the riparian forest landscape of karkhe river. soil macro fauna were sampled using 200 sampling point along parallel transects (perpendicular to the river). the sampling procedure was hierarchically, maximum distance between samples was 0.5 km, but the samples were taken at shorter distance at different location of sampling. soil macro fauna were extracted from 50 cm×50 cm×25 cm soil monolith by hand-sorting procedure. at each transect point, approximately 1m distance from the macro fauna sample location, three 50 cm×50 cm×25 cm samples were taken from 0-25 depth of soil. soil macro fauna biomass, ph, ec and soil texture were measured. then the spatial continuity, using geostatistics (variogram) were described. the maps obtained by block kriging. the variograms of variable revealed the presence of spatial autocorrelation. the range of influence was 1728 m for macro fauna biomass, 1800 m for ph, 1536 m for ec, 2964 for sand (%), 2100 for silt (%) and 3264 for clay (%).the kriging maps showed that the soil macro fauna biomass and soil properties have spatial variability. in this research, the spatial pattern of soil macro fauna biomass is similar with the spatial pattern of silt and soil ph, that was shown in correlation.