Soil Plant Relations In Diagnosing the Saline/Alkaline Soils from an Arid Region of Turkey.

The purpose of this study was to use soil-plant characteristics for diagnosing the saline/alkaline soils in a saline-alkaline environment through principal component analyses (PCA). Soil samples were collected with grid sampling method (400m*400m). Physical and chemical properties of soils were characterized in the laboratory and plant species were identified at each sampling point in the field. A principal component analysis was used to correlate the soil characteristics with the related plant species in the field. Soil maps were prepared for each soil characteristics evaluated. The results indicated that plant populations were clearly changed with the variation in soil characteristics. The numbers of plants were quite low at highly saline and alkaline environments, whereas both the species and the number of plants were increased at slightly saline and alkaline conditions. PCA enabled to classify plants based on soil salinity and alkalinity conditions as highly saline and alkaline, saline and highly alkaline, slightly saline and alkaline, non saline and alkaline and saline and alkaline with high calcium carbonate content. The results revealed that plant species are good indicators of soil characteristics, and one can easily get valuable information on soil characteristics from plant characterization of the area.