Short term spatio-temporal variability of soil water extractable Al and Zn after a low severity grassland fire in Lithuania

Abstract

The aim of this work is to study the short-term impact (2, 5, 7 and 9 months after the fire) of a low severity grassland fire on the spatio-temporal variability of soil water extractable Al and Zn. The spatial variability of these nutrients was assessed using some well-known interpolation techniques: inverse distance weighted (IDW) raisen to 1, 2, 3 and 4, radial basis functions (inverse multiquadratic, multilog, muitiquadratic, natural cubic spline and thin plate spline) and first and second order local polynomials. No significant differences were identified between soil water extractable Al from control and burned plots. On the contrary, significant differences were found for water-extractable Zn 5 and 9 months after the fire. Significant differences were identified through time, which can be attributed to seasonal variations in the availability of nutrients. In most cases, the best interpolators were IDW techniques suggesting that the spatial distribution was heterogeneous and the small-scale variability was high. This can be attributed to different plant nutrient demands and varying soil infiltration rates. Overall, low severity burning did not showed important impacts on the studied elements.