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Land degradation is a global problem. Best management of degraded land can be done by evaluating the spatial variability of soil properties including chemical properties of degraded land and mapping such variations. Since, a significant portion of arable land in India is chemically degraded due to soil acidity; the present study was conducted to study the spatial variability of soil acidity (pH), electrical conductivity (EC), soil organic carbon (OC) content, exchangeable potassium (K⁺), calcium (Ca²⁺) and magnesium (Mg²⁺) contents in some cropped acid soils of India. A total of four hundred (one hundred from each series) representative surface (0–0.15 m depth) soil samples were collected from arable soils representing four soil series namely Hariharapur, Debatoli, Rajpora and Neeleswaram situated in Orissa, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala states of India, respectively, and were analyzed. Soil acidity (pH between 3.90 and 6.45) showed a low variability, in contrast to other soil properties, which showed moderate variability. The coefficients of variation varied from 32.4 to 74.3, 31.2 to 50.9, 45.6 to 100, 71.9 to 93.0 and 59.0 to 79.8% for EC (mean between 0.05 and 0.09 dS m⁻¹), OC (mean between 0.29 to 1.86%), exchangeable K⁺(mean between 39.1 and 77.7 mg kg⁻¹), Ca²⁺(mean between 148 and 293 mg kg⁻¹) and Mg²⁺(mean between 111 and 191 mg kg⁻¹), respectively. Soil pH and OC content were positively and significantly correlated with exchangeable K⁺, Ca²⁺and Mg²⁺content. Geostatistical analysis revealed that the best fit models were gaussian, exponential and spherical for different soil properties with moderate to strong spatial dependency. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
