Regionalization for soil texture in Yanqi Basin of Xinjiang, China

Soil texture is one of the key indicators for soil quality assessment and sustainable agriculture management. Yanqi Basin has the serious problem about the areal soil salinization, and urgently need to make clear the distribution of soil texture of medium-large scale. The paper utilized and analyzed the texture data of 372 soil holes from Yanqi Basin based on USDA-SCA criteria, and achieved the classification and basin-scale regionalization of soil texture for different depth level (four levels). The essential results and conclusions are as follows: The soil textural classes of Yanqi Basin are mainly gravel, sand, loamy sand, sandy loam, loam, silt loam and silt; different regions of soil texture surround the Bosten Lake, and become thinner from tableland to the southeast lacustrine plain, from the upstream to the downstream of Kaidu River, from the edge of the basin to the middle; and at the same time soil textures at the upper of soil profiles are thinner than that at the bottom. This study support the construction of 3D soil structure as well as the unsaturated-saturated water and salt transport model, therefore it is significant for designing water and salts controlling patterns for salinization areas in both of theory and practice.