Dissertations and Theses

Summary

Current agriculture needs methodologies to determine soil attributes that are less aggressive to the environment. X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (EFRX) has been a promising technique in providing simultaneous quantitative and elemental analysis of soil composition. The objective of this work was to characterize the classes, geology and geomorphology of the soils of the Western Plateau, using EFRX and the multivariate technique. A total of 262 soil samples were collected at 0.0 - 0.2 m depth for chemical, mineralogical and spectral characterization. The intensities of the peaks of the Si, Al, Fe and Ti elements of the spectra obtained by the EFRX were related to the classes of soils, geological formations and degrees of dissection of the landscape present in the Western Plateau. The main components analysis, using the data obtained by EFRX, allied to the attributes clay, sand, Fe content extracted by dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate sodium and ammonium oxalate, allowed the characterization of the soil classes, geological formations and degrees of dissection of the landscape present in the study region. The intensity of the peak of Fe presented the second largest eigenvector in the characterization of the axis of the main component 1, and the intensity of the peaks of Ti and Si presented, respectively, the fourth and fifth largest eigenvectors on this axis