I am working on an assignment wherein I have to establish a network of sensors to detect soil parameters such as nutrient level, pH, Moisture Content, EC etc. Please help me to understand the required number of sensors and their placement in the field. I have to cover app. 100 ha. of oil palm plantation.
You can create a power curve which will tell you the optimal number of sensors. But 100 is a lot of hectares – could you select perhaps just 30 ha and place 30 sensors in each ha? Thirty seems to be the magic number by all accounts lol. Also, I don't always recommend random placement because you want to sample in the relevant parts of each plot. For example, what if random placement caused no sensors to be placed under canopies. You would then have no data for these areas. So instead you could place sensors in line transects, for example. I hope this helps:)
I would have a soil scientist confirm if one or several soil types. If several, stratify sampling by soil type. If elevation or distance from streams varies across area, these could be other possible stratification factors. Depth to water table may be a factor to record over time. If you can identify areas of varying productivity, then I would use productivity as a stratification tool to select sites, and then try to characterize the differences in conditions. In essence, use the existing palm trees as biological indicators of the site conditions, whether you use age and height, dbh, trunk increment coring of growth rings, nutrients in core, or another indicator to help evaluate.
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