APPLICATIONS OF GEOSTATISTICS IN PLANT NEMATOLOGY

The application of geostatistics to plant nematology was made by evalu ating soil and nematode data acquired from 200 soil samples collected from the A(p) horizon of a reed canary-grass field in northern Minneso ta. Geostatistical concepts relevant to nematology include semi-variog ram modelling, kriging, and change of support calculations. Soil and n ematode data generally followed a spherical semi-variogram model, with little random variability associated with soil data and large inheren t variability for nematode data. Block kriging of soil and nematode da ta provided useful contour maps of the data. Change of support calcula tions indicated that most of the random variation in nematode data was due to short-range spatial variability in the nematode population den sities.