Comparison of Terrain Indices and Landform Classification Procedures in Low-Relief Agricultural Fields

摘要

Landforms control the spatial distribution of numerous factors associated with agronomy and water quality. Although curvature and slope are the fundamental surface derivatives used in landform classification procedures, methodologies for landform classifications have been performed with other terrain indices including the topographic position index (TPI) and the convergence index (CI). The objectives of this study are to compare plan curvature, the convergence index, profile curvature, and the topographic position index at various scales to determine which better identifies the spatial variability of soil phosphorus (P) within three low relief agricultural fields in central Illinois and to compare how two methods of landform classification, e.g. Pennock et al. (1987) and a modified approach to the TPI method (Weiss 2001, Jenness 2006), capture the variability of spatial soil P within an agricultural field. Soil sampling was performed on a 0.4 ha grid within three agricultural fields located near Decatur, IL and samples were analyzed for Mehlich-3 phosphorus. A 10-m DEM of the three fields was also generated from a survey performed with a real time kinematic global positioning system. The DEM was used to generate rasters of profile curvature, plan curvature, topographic position index, and convergence index in each of the three fields at scales ranging from 10 m to 150 m radii. In two of the three study sites, the TPI (r ≥ -0.42) was better correlated to soil P than profile curvature (r ≤ 0.41), while the CI (r ≥ -0.52) was better correlated to soil P than plan curvature (r ≥ -0.45) in all three sites. Although the Pennock method of landform classification failed to identify footslopes and shoulders, which are clearly part of these fields’ topographic framework, the Pennock method (R² = 0.29) and TPI method (R² = 0.30) classified landforms that captured similar amounts of soil P spatial variability in two of the three study sites. The TPI and CI should be further explored when performing terrain analysis at the agricultural field scale to create solutions for precision management objectives.