It is commonly accepted that an estimated soil variogram can be transferred to another similar area for deriving the tolerable spacing of a sampling grid or, more generally, the sample size, given a requirement on the quality of the soil property map of the recipient area. The quality of the derived tolerable grid spacing depends on how similar the population variograms of the donor area and recipient area are. In practice we are uncertain about the variograms of both areas due to sampling errors. Ideally, the uncertainty about the variogram of the donor area is accounted for in deriving the tolerable grid spacing. To assess the transferability, we should also account for uncertainty in the estimated variogram of the recipient area. In this study the transferability of variograms of soil pH, P, Mg and K is analysed for three grassland fields in Ireland, which are similar in soil-forming factors. One field served as donor area, the other two as recipient area. For all three fields and for each soil property, 500 variograms were sampled from the posterior distribution of the variogram parameters. Results showed that the estimated variogram parameters of the recipient fields differed largely from those of the transferred variograms. The ranges of estimated mean kriging variance values for the various grid spacings, as obtained with the two sets of variograms (one set of the donor field, one set of the recipient field), did not overlap. Even after scaling the transferred variogram with an estimate of the variance of the recipient field, the transferred variogram was of no use for determining the tolerable grid spacing. The difference in the variograms can possibly be explained by the difference in historical land use. Highlights: Transferability of variograms to derive tolerable grid spacing for mapping grassland fields is assessed Transferability should be based on the uncertainty distributions of the tolerable grid spacings Due to difference in historical land use, local and transferred variograms differed largely Transferability of a variogram is very poor, even after scaling the transferred variogram.

中文翻译：

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用于抽样设计的土壤变异函数的可转移性：爱尔兰三个草原的案例研究

人们普遍认为，如果对接收区域的土壤特性图的质量有要求，可以将估计的土壤变异函数转移到另一个类似的区域，以推导出采样网格的容许间距，或者更一般地说，推导出样本大小。导出的容许网格间距的质量取决于供区和受区的人口变异函数的相似程度。实际上，由于抽样误差，我们不确定这两个区域的变异函数。理想情况下，在推导可容忍的网格间距时考虑了有关供体区域变异函数的不确定性。为了评估可转移性，我们还应该考虑接收区域估计变异函数的不确定性。在本研究中，土壤 pH、P、分析了爱尔兰三个草地的镁和钾，它们在土壤形成因素上是相似的。一处为捐助区，另外两处为受援区。对于所有三个田地和每种土壤性质，从变异函数参数的后验分布中采样了 500 个变异函数。结果表明，接收域的估计变异函数参数与转移变异函数的参数差异很大。用两组变异函数（一组供体字段，一组受体字段）获得的各种网格间距的估计平均克里金方差值的范围没有重叠。即使在使用接收者字段的方差估计值对传递的变异函数进行缩放后，传递的变异函数也无法用于确定可容忍的网格间距。变异函数的差异可能可以用历史土地利用的差异来解释。亮点： 评估变异函数的可转移性，以导出用于绘制草地的可容忍网格间距 可转移性应基于可容忍网格间距的不确定性分布 由于历史土地利用的差异，本地和转移变异函数差异很大 变异函数的可转移性非常差，即使在缩放传输的变异函数之后。