REDUCTION OF SAMPLE SIZE IN THE ANALYSIS OF SPATIAL VARIABILITY OF NONSTATIONARY SOIL CHEMICAL ATTRIBUTES

ABSTRACT In the study of spatial variability of soil attributes, it is essential to define a sampling plan with adequate sample size. This study aimed to evaluate, through simulated data, the influence of parameters of the geostatistical model and sampling configuration on the optimization process, and resize and reduce the sample size of a sampling configuration of a commercial area composed of 102 points. For this, an optimization process called genetic algorithm (GA) was used to optimize the efficiency of the geostatistical model estimation based on the Fisher information matrix. The simula...