Comparative assessment of the methods for exchangeable acidity measuring

Abstract

A comparative assessment of the results of measuring the exchangeable acidity and its components by different methods was performed for the main mineral genetic horizons of texturally-differentiated gleyed and nongleyed soddy-podzolic and gley-podzolic soils of the Komi Republic. It was shown that the contents of all the components of exchangeable soil acidity determined by the Russian method (with potassium chloride solution as extractant, с(KCl) = 1 mol/dm³) were significantly higher than those obtained by the international method (with barium chloride solution as extractant, с(ВаCl₂) = 0.1 mol/dm³). The error of the estimate of the concentration of Н⁺ ions extracted with barium chloride solution equaled 100%, and this allowed only qualitative description of this component of the soil acidity. In the case of the extraction with potassium chloride, the error of measurements was 50%. It was also shown that the use of potentiometric titration suggested by the Russian method overestimates the results of soil acidity measurement caused by the exchangeable metal ions (Al(III), Fe(III), and Mn(II)) in comparison with the atomic emission method.