Factorial Analysis of Soil pH as a Function of Its Moisture Content and Distance from Flare Point

Abstract— This paper presents a derived model which predicts the soil pH based on its soil moisture content and distance from flare point. The response coefficient of the soil pH to the distance from flare point and soil moisture content was evaluated to ascertain the viability and reliability of the highlighted dependence. Results of series of evaluations carried out indicate that the correlations between soil pH and distance from flare point & soil moisture content as evaluated from the actual and model-predicted results were all ˃ 0.88. Standard errors incurred in obtaining results of soil pH based on distance from flare point & moisture content were 0.08 and 0.07 & 0.076 and 0.06%, as obtained from actual and model-predicted results respectively. The validity of the model; ξ = - 0.0496 β² – 1.5 x10^-7ϑ + 0.7122β + 0.0003ϑ + 2.5408 was rooted on the insignificant maximum deviation of model-predicted values of soil pH from the corresponding actual values which was less than 1.1%. This translated into over 98.9% operational confidence level for the derived model as well as over 0.98 response coefficient of soil pH to the combined operational influence of distance from flare point and soil moisture content.