This work aimed to evaluate soil resistance to penetration by means of a constant-speed electronic penetrograph, in two soils: a clay-textured Rhodic Haplustox and a loamy-textured Typic Haplustox, under mechanization and transportation processes in a sugarcane crop as a function of different numbers of cuts and different working depths. The data were statistically analyzed under two formats: (a) by means of conventional statistics, in which the treatment means were compared by Tukey test at 5% probability level, and (b) by geostatistical analysis, in which semivariance was used to produce models that would represent the spatial dependence of the data. The resistance to penetration results showed distinct behaviors for the studied depths, indicating that the weight of vehicles and machinery and the rotating wheel pressure caused alterations in the soil profile.
soil compaction; mechanization; geostatistics
