Abstract
The soil acidity level is a key soil characteristic that determines soil
nutrient availability, soil microbial activities and crop growth.
However, studies on distribution and extent of soil acidity in Ethiopia
are not available. This study was carried out to predict the extent and
severity of soil acidity. The study used 88,265 soil pH samples
collected from soil laboratories and 21,439 samples compiled from
studies. Rainfall, altitude, slope gradient, soil, and land cover were
considered to generate spatial autocorrelation and integrated into
geospatial analysis to predict the soil pH. The performance of the
kriging model was found to be satisfactory with a standard error of
0.77, RMSE of 0.51, and R2 of 0.74. The model estimates showed that 47%
and 30.2% of the country’s total area and rainfed areas were acidic
(pH<6.5), respectively. Out of the total area of the country,
3.7% is found to be extremely to strongly acidic (pH<5.5),
20.7% is moderately acidic (5.6