Generating a Digital Map of Field Capacity and Permanent Wilting Point of Agricultural Soils in the Southern Part of Sistan Plain

This study aimed to estimate the spatial distribution of soil properties including field capacity (FC), permanent wilting point (PWP) and  total available water (TAW) using ordinary kriging (OK) and random forest (RF) in agricultural lands of the southern Sistan Plain, covering an area of approximtely 147000 hectars. FC, PWP, and TAW and soil texture components were measured for a total of 200 surface soil samples (0-30 cm). Performance evaluation of the two methods based on the percentage of normalized root mean square error (nRMSE) revealed that the conventional OK with 5% less error in estimating FC, 3% less error in estimating PWP, and 5% less error in estimating TAW performed slightly better than RF. Comparing Bias values showed that OK underestimates both FC and PWP and overestimates TAW, while RF overestimates all three parameters. Spatial distribution maps of FC, PWP, and TAW produced by OK model showed that the highest amount of FC (23%) and TAW (14.4%) were in the west and northeast of the region, which had heavier texture and lower altitude from the sea level. In the southern and southeastern regions, which have lighter soil texture, the amount of available water was less compared to the western and northeastern regions. In the RF model, the most important variable extracted from satellite images was Digital Elevation Model  (DEM), and all three features had higher values in areas where DEM was lower. It seems that the flatness of the study area and the inadequacy of auxiliary variables caused the lower accuracy of the RF method.