Cropping practices, soil properties, pedotransfer functions and organic carbon storage at Kuanria canal command area in India

Abstract

Effects of cropping practices on soil properties viz. particle size distribution, pH, bulk density (BD), field capacity (FC, -33 kPa), permanent wilting point (PWP, -1500 kPa), available water capacity (AWC) and soil organic carbon (SOC) were assessed. The pedotransfer functions (PTFs) were developed for saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks), water retention at FC and PWP of soils for different sites under major cropping system in a canal irrigated area. The results revealed that the soils are mainly composed of sand and clay with the clay contents ranging from 29.6 to 48.8%, BD of 1.44-1.72 Mg m-3, and 0.34 to 0.95% SOC. The Ks decreased, and water retention at FC, PWP and AWC increased significantly with soil depth due to greater clay contents in lower soil depths. The PTFs were best represented as the power functions for prediction of Ks with clay content as predictor variable; whereas the PTFs for water retention at FC and PWP were better represented as the exponential functions. SOC content was higher under rice-sugarcane crop rotation compared to other systems. SOC storage in the surface layer was higher in rice-sugarcane rotation (18.90-20.53 Mg ha-1) than other sites. The developed PTFs would be very useful in soil and water management strategies for the study area or elsewhere having similar soil and cropping practices. The information on SOC storage in the Kuanria region would help for better soil and crop planning in future.

Development and Evaluation of Pedotransfer Functions to Estimate Soil Moisture Content at Field Capacity and Permanent Wilting Point for South African Soils

“…Moreover, SOC acts as a binding agent that improves the moisture absorption capacity of the soil [70]. These findings agree with earlier studies that reported that silt, clay, and SOC are significantly and positively correlated to both FC and PWP [16,17,21,42,71,72]. The findings of this study suggest that sand, silt, clay, and SOC content can be used as the explanatory variables in the estimation of soil moisture content at both FC and PWP.…”

Quantitative mapping of soil salinity using the DUALEM‐21S instrument and EM inversion software

“…The normal annual rainfall is about 592 mm spread over 23 days. The rainfall occurs during the southwest monsoon and about 1,500 mm annual evaporation under Ustic soil moisture regime (Mandal et al, ). The southwest monsoon contributes about 84% of the annual rainfall (499 mm) with July and August being the wettest months (Central ground water board, Ministry of water resources, Government of India, ).…”

Response of Potential Indicators of Soil Quality to Land-Use and Land-Cover Change under a Mediterranean Climate in the Region of Al-Jabal Al-Akhdar, Libya

“…Higher BD in agricultural soils is due to machinery traffic during cultivation which led to soil compaction, one of the significant challenges in agricultural fields in several parts of the world [71,74,75]. Higher BD values in the cultivated land and lower values in natural forest land can be related to the level of soil organic matter.…”

“…This was confirmed by the significant correlation (r = 0.81; p < 0.01) between K sat and SOM (Figure 4a). Lower K sat in cultivated soils (RA and IC) could be due to the use of heavy machinery which can affect the continuity of macropores within the topsoil, reduce aggregate stability, and cause soil compaction leading to reduction in the ability of the soil to transmit water from soil surface to below ground [71,74,75,87]. In cultivated soils, K sat can also be reduced due to the compounding effects of rainfall and surface runoff in the absence of vegetation cover [88].…”