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Updated: Jul 4, 2026

Sampling Soils in a Heterogeneous Research Plot
Published on: January 7, 2019
The effect of short-range spatial variability on soil sampling uncertainty
Marcel Van der Perk1, Paolo de Zorzi, Sabrina Barbizzi
1Department of Physical Geography, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80115, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands. m.vanderperk@geo.uu.nl
Abstract:
This paper aims to quantify the soil sampling uncertainty arising from the short-range spatial variability of elemental concentrations in the topsoils of agricultural, semi-natural, and contaminated environments. For the agricultural site, the relative standard sampling uncertainty ranges between 1% and 5.5%. For the semi-natural area, the sampling uncertainties are 2-4 times larger than in the agricultural area. The contaminated site exhibited significant short-range spatial variability in elemental composition, which resulted in sampling uncertainties of 20-30%.
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