| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10997836 | CATENA | 2017 | 6 Pages |
Abstract
The soil Biological Fertility Index (BFI) is an indicator system recently proposed to monitoring soil fertility in Italy by composing 6 biological variables derived from field sampling and standard laboratory analysis. Large-scale validation of the BFI is still lacking. By using parametric/non-parametric correlations and multivariate statistical analysis, this study compares the statistical distribution of the BFI over 1079 soil samples representative of various environmental contexts in Italy with 8 alternative indicators formulated according to different aggregation rules and weighting techniques of the 6 variables composing the BFI. Our results demonstrate that the BFI is stable to changes in the composing variables, aggregation rules and weighting techniques, confirming its appropriateness as a multi-domain indicator of biological fertility specifically designed for assessment of Italian soils.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Earth and Planetary Sciences
Earth-Surface Processes
Authors
Gianluca Renzi, Loredana Canfora, Luca Salvati, Anna Benedetti,