Investigation of Relationships between Soil Physico-chemical Properties and Topography in Jeonbuk Upland Fields

The properties of upland soils are much more dependent upon topography than those of paddy soils, and they give us very useful information to manage the upland fields. Therefore, we investigated the selected physical and chemical properties of upland soils at 84 and 150 topographic sampling sites, respectively. The topographic sites included 34.7% of local valley and fans, 18.7% of hilly and mountains, 20.0% of mountain foot slopes, 14.0% of alluvial plains, 8.0% of diluvium, and 4.6% of fluvio-marine deposits. Based on the investigation, soil textures in Jeonbuk upland fields were mostly sandy loam, sandy clay loam, clay loam, and clay soils, especially sandy clay loam soils were evenly distributed in all of the topographic sites. Soil slopes in the sites ranged from 0 to 15%, which showed an optimal condition for farm land. Soil bulk density and compaction values were from 1.19 to 1.24 g cm -3 and from 12.1 to 13.9 mm, respectively. As comparing with the optimal conditions of soil chemical properties for upland soils proposed by National Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology, Korea, 37%, 42.7%, 93.0% of the sites were within optimum levels with soil pH, content of soil organic matter, and electrical conductivity, respectively. However, 64.0%, 47.3%, 48.7%, and 42.7% of the upland soils contained excess levels of exchangeable K, Ca, and Mg, and available phosphorus, respectively. In addition, the contents of heavy metals, As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn, in the Jeonbuk upland soils were much less than threshold levels.