Multivariate assessment of soil quality across different land use types in the hilly terrain of the subtropics of India

The unsustainable conversion offorest areas into agricultural land poses aserious danger tothe soil eminence ofArunachal Pradesh’s environmentally delicate hilly topography. Understanding the impacts ofthis land-use change iscrucial for preventing further degradation. This study aimed todevelop soil quality indices (SQIs) for different land use types: natural forest (NF), current jhum cultivation (JC), fallow jhum land (FJC), and pineapple cultivation(PA). Samples ofsoil were taken atadepth of0 to15cm and examined for 22 potential soil quality indicators, with 19 showing significant (P< 0.05) influence from land use, constituting the total dataset (TDS). Principal component analysis (PCA) was employed onTDS toidentify the minimum data set (MDS), comprising dehydrogenase activity, diethylenetriaminpentahacetic acid (DTPA)-extractable iron, and bulk density, contributing 73%, 19%, and 8% to the overall SQI, respectively. Subsequently, different SQIs were estimated using linear/nonlinear and additive/weighted scoring functions. The results revealed substantial alterations in SQIs among the land use types, through NF exhibiting the highest soil quality. Notably, the nonlinear SQIs exhibited greater sensitivity to land use conversion compared to their linear counterparts, indicating their potential as a more robust tool for assessing soil quality changes. This study concludes that the transformation of land use in the hilly regions of subtropics of Arunachal Pradesh has led to the deterioration of soil quality. The proposed indexing framework, leveraging the sensitivity and clarity of nonlinear SQIs, can effectively evaluate and compare soil quality across different land use scenarios, thereby informing sustainable land management strategies.