The clay mineral maps of Tripura and their application in land use planning

Abstract

Earlier exercise on the preparation of maps on clay minerals for some Indian states did not have the well-defined boundaries because of inadequate spatial data. Appreciating this as an important exercise for efficient management of natural resources, required research initiative has been made by the National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (ICAR), Nagpur to complete the task of generating clay mineral maps of different states. In this endeavour we generated various theme maps of clay minerals of Tripura. The clay samples (<2 μm) of the selected soil series were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) method and the clay mineral content was estimated using the X-ray diffractograms. The soil parameters such as cation exchange capacity, clay and organic matter contents were used to correlate the mineral make-up in the clay fractions. The data on clay minerals for 48 soil series were utilized to generate a clay mineral map for the state. It is interesting to note that most of the 2:1 clay minerals are interstratified ones which appear to have a close relation with the land use patterns in terms of forest, plantation and agriculture in the state.