After reading studies investigating methane production and oxidation potentials throughout a soil core, the term 'depth-integrated' is used to provide a single value that somehow summarises the complete set of values obtained in the soil profile. I am wondering what 'depth-integrated' entials, whether it is simply a mean of the entire set of values throughout the profile or whether it relates to something else.
Thanks, Alex
As far as I understand, a depth integrated value for a soil profile is not the mean but rather a 'weighted average' of different horizons. I.e. the thickness of the different horizons expressed as a fraction of the total profile depth is used to calculate the depth integrated value - hope it makes sense
As I understand, it is a weighted average (the weight is based on the thickness of soil layers or horizons in the soil profile).
Both comments above are correct, provided that the researcher has examined the complete soil profile, measured the thickness of each distinctive soil layer and then separate samples were taken from each distinctive soil layer.
In agricultural soils where conventional tillage has been applied for several years, it is difficult to identify distinctive soil layers within the plow layer (usually at the top 0-20 cm). In such conditions, the researcher could take samples from the soil profile in equal depth increments (for example: 0-10 cm, 10-20 cm, 20-30 cm…). Then the mean for the complete depth (in this case 0-30 cm) can simply be the simple average of the three measurements.
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