On the Influence of the Nugget Effect on the Efficiency of Magnetometric Soil Surface Screening

Abstract The paper presents selected aspects of calculations and modelling of variograms from measurements of soil surface magnetic susceptibility for rapid screening of surface soil contamination with Technogenic Magnetic Particles (TMP). In particular, the methodology of variogram analysis in the case of multiple magnetometric measurements in one measurement location with the use of the MS2D Bartington sensor was discussed. A new approach to analysing such measurements was proposed that allows determining and using the nugget effect from standard, already existing measurements. This is of key importance for the quality of spatial analyses, and thus the screening results obtained by means of field magnetometry. In the paper, it was shown, step by step, that averaging the measurements performed at one measurement point during the calculation of the empirical variograms does not result in the loss of information on spatial variability in the microscale. As it was calculated non-averaged measurements were characterised by the nugget-to-sill ratio of about 96 % which was much higher than in the case of averaged measurements (close to 0 %). A range of correlation was similar in both cases and was equal to about 300 m - 400 m. The local variogram revealed a range of correlation of about 80 cm. As a result, the screening results are more reliable than is the case with the traditional procedure. An additional advantage of the work was the performance of all calculations in free R software.