Effects of land preparation and plantings of vegetation on soil moisture in a hilly loess catchment in China

Abstract

In the dryland and degraded regions, soil moisture is the primary factor determining ecological restoration. Proper land preparations and vegetation restoration can improve soil moisture and benefit land restoration. Identifying their effects on soil moisture is thus essential for developing suitable management strategies. In this study, four typical land preparation techniques (level ditches, fish‐scale pits, zig terraces, and level benches) and non‐native vegetation types (Prunus armeniaca, Platycladus orientalis, Pinus tabulaeformis, and Caragana microphylla) were planted on a semiarid loess hilly catchment, China. Soil moisture was monitored by a time‐domain reflectometer, and its spatial–temporal variations were analyzed during the 2014–2015 growing seasons. The following results were captured. (a) Soil moisture was highest for the combination of P. orientalis and fish‐scale pits (P. orientalis/fish‐scale pits, 10.37%), followed by P. armeniaca/level ditches (10.23%), P. orientalis/zig terraces (9.67%), C. microphylla/level benches (8.62%), P. tabulaeformis/fish‐scale pits (8.05%), and P. tabulaeformis/zig terraces (7.72%). (b) Fish‐scale pits offered a better rainwater‐harvesting capacity during the rainy months, whereas zig terraces had a higher water retention capacity under extremely dry conditions (as indicated by the temporal soil moisture variation and soil water retention curves). (c) P. tabulaeformis consumed more water than other vegetation types (26.7% lower than that of P. orientalis). (d) Soil moisture in shallower layers (0–80 cm) was more affected by land preparations and was more effected by vegetation types in deeper soil layers (80–180 cm). We thus suggest that fish‐scale pits may be a better choice in wetter regions whereas zig terraces and P. orientalis are more suitable in the driest parts of the Loess Plateau to restore the fragile ecosystems.

Sustainability Analysis of Prosopis juliflora (Sw.) DC Based Restoration of Degraded Land in North India

“…Literature provides ample evidences regarding the efforts which are being made to improve the productivity of degraded lands [5][6][7][8]. Many national and international agencies are working on the improvement of such land types [9][10][11] including land degradation neutrality (LDN) and land restoration for attaining UN-SDGs [12][13][14]. According to UNCCD, LDN is a situation where there is no further degradation to the land system while enhancing the vitality, productivity and ecosystem services of the land system for meeting the food and nutritional demand of the current and future generations, and also for attaining ecosystem sustainability (www.unccd.int).…”

“…The Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration (GPFLR) is another enterprise operational at global level for both financing and practising the restoration initiatives across the globe [11]. Furthermore, Keesstra et al [12] suggested four inventive methods to attain LDN and developing suitable remediation techniques for addressing soil-related SDGs, whereas Tianjiao et al [13] reported the effect of various land management practices and Novara et al [14] studied the effect of sustainable farming on soil carbon recovery.…”

Impacts of Introducing Remote Sensing Soil Moisture in Calibrating a Distributed Hydrological Model for Streamflow Simulation

“…Several recent researches have turned to soil moisture, evapotranspiration and other hydrological variables as a complement for parameter calibration [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Among different surface/subsurface components, soil moisture plays a significant role in the energy and water balance of the hydrologic cycle [15][16][17][18]. Especially in a heavy rainfall event where the amount of precipitation is close to the storage capacity of the unsaturated zone, current soil moisture content has a tremendous influence on whether surface flow would occur [19].…”

Fish-Scale Pits with Diversion Holes Enhance Water Conservation in Semi-arid Loess Soil: Experiments with Soil Columns, Mulching, and Simulated Rainfall

“…• Diversion hole is a better measure to improve rainfall resource utilization, especially under high rainfall events. the surface runoff during heavy hard rain by intercepting rainwater on the soil surface to the pit and increasing water infiltration (Fu et al 2010;Feng et al 2018). However, fish-scale pit also increased the ineffective evaporation because of the large contact area between soil and air (Li et al 2011).…”