Carlos Alexis Silva AballayEstudio de la aplicación de herramientas estadísticas multivariadas en propiedades físicas de distintos suelos de Chile

Abstract

Considering the wide variability of climates, relief and ecosystems throughout the country, Chile has very diverse soils; in addition, forestry and livestock management increase the variability of soil properties, mainly physical, due to the alterations generated by tillage, the traffic of machinery and animals, which makes it difficult to understand the natural or anthropic variability of soil properties and their interdependence. There are several statistical tools that allow the analysis of these variables, one of them being multivariate analysis, which allows a large amount of data to be analyzed in a simple way, in order to see relationships between variables, without eliminating relevant information; however, it is not always used correctly, or the maximum benefit is not always obtained. In the present work, a series of databases of soil physical properties (local scale, basin scale, national scale) were compiled and multivariate statistical analyses were carried out to establish criteria and standards for an adequate interpretation of the data. The results indicate relationships between variables that depend on the scale of work and the availability of data, and it is even possible to include discrete and/or categorical variables. With the relationships between variables at different scales, guidelines were generated as a manual for future work in the area.