Variation of Soil Temperature at Various Depths and Time using Mathematical model

The importance of soil temperature cannot be overemphasised, as it is fundamental in determining seeds and crops germination and growth. In this work, temperature at four different soil depths are empirically predicted using the one-dimensional heat flux equation, with mean monthly temperature from the University of Jos Weather Station. The model performed best at the 5 cm depth with a mean bias error (MBE) of -0.67 cm and root mean squared error (RMSE) of 1.18 cm, and coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.83. The worse performance is obtained at the 10 cm depth with respective MBE and RMSE of -0.85 and 1.55 cm and R2 of 0.76. Whereas, soil temperature at all the depths are found to peak in March/April with a dip in September/October at the monthly cycle, highest value (31.8 0C) which occurred at the 5 cm depth was found in 1993 with the least (19.0 0C) at the 50 cm depth in 1991.

Barman, D., Kundu, D. K., Pal, S., Pal, S., Chakraborty, A. K., Jha, A. K., Mazumdar, S. P., Saha, R., & Bhattacharyya, P. (2017). Soil temperature prediction from air temperature for alluvial soils in lower Indo-Gangetic plain. International Agrophysics, 31(1), 9–22. https://doi.org/10.1515/intag-2016-0034
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