Impacts on soil quality from long-term irrigation with treated greywater

Abstract

Drought condition in many places leads to the imperative use of greywater for irrigation. There is a serious concern on the impact of such prolonged uses on soil sustainability. The objective of this study was to evaluate the long-term impacts of greywater irrigation on soil electrical conductivity (EC) and other soil quality parameters in field conditions. Six locations were monitored in this study where home gardens have been irrigated with treated greywater for 2 years. Results showed a general reduction in EC levels of soil samples along all depth intervals at all locations. The average soil EC before greywater irrigation was 0.97 dS/m and decreased to 0.41 dS/m, which may be due to the use of greywater as well as the rainwater effect. The reduction in soil EC and irrigation water quantity shows positive correlation (correlation coefficient r = 0.64). Calcium precipitation might also have a major role in soil EC reduction. Soil calcium content was 81 mg L -1 before using treated greywater and decreased to 43 mg L -1 after 2 years of treated greywater usage, which might have been caused by calcium carbonates (CaCO 3 ) precipitation. The results of other soil chemical analyses clearly show that using treated greywater for irrigation has reduced the concentration of organic matters, K, Cd, Pb, P, Mg, Cl, Na, exchangeable sodium percentage, and sodium adsorption ratio after 2 years of application. Zn concentration increased from 11 to 15 mg L -1 , and soil pH became slightly higher from 7.6 to 7.8.

Assessment of geotechnical and physico-chemical properties of age-long greywater-contaminated soils in basement complex areas, southwest Nigeria

“…The OM content in Isolu samples ranged between 0.6 and 0.9 g/kg, while it ranged from 0.6 to 0.9 g/kg in Mapo soil samples. The reduced concentration of OM at the two locations is in line with result of Albalawneh et al (2015) who reported reduced concentration of OM on treated greywater for irrigation purpose. The OM value at 0.5 m depth for both CS and GCS at Ibadan has the same numerical value, while there is slight increase in OM for GCS at Ibadan over CS at depths 1.0 and 1.5 m. However, the numerical values of OM content for Isolu CS and GCS at 1.0 and 1.5 m were the same, while Isolu GCS had its OM value increased slightly at 0.5 m depth relative to CS.…”

“…The impact of greywater irrigation on some soil properties is well documented by previous studies (Abu-Zreig et al 2003;Pinto et al 2010;Xu et al 2010;Weil-Shafran et al 2006;Travis et al 2010;Albalawneh et al 2015;Misra et al 2012;Bame et al 2014). However, the impacts of greywater on engineering and physico-chemical properties were rarely studied.…”

Effect of Recurrent Irrigation with Treated Sewage from Anaerobic Digester Coupled with Anaerobic Baffled Reactor on Soil Fertility

“…The soil pH increased beyond 8.4 value, indicates a salt affected soil due to accumulation of basic cations and exchangeable sodium in soil associated with recurrent or long term effect of irrigation with effluents (To and Christen, 1993;Disciglio et al, 2015). The finding is in line with previous studies on long term effect of irrigation with treated sewage ( Disciglio et al, 2015;Albalawneh et al, 2016). Similar results with treated sewage and those irrigated with tap water revealed no significant difference at all sampled depths for all three consecutive farming cycles.…”

Review of conceptual and systematic progress of precision irrigation

“…It is also noteworthy to point out that the effectiveness impacts of irrigation intervals on crop productivity and quality coefficients have already been studied [110] . Since the remarkable impacts of specific irrigation approaches on plant growth are important in the statistic domain, the persistent influences of waste water irrigation on the electrical conductivity of field soil, moisture content, saturated hydraulic conductivity, and other soil quality indexes in practical field conditions, have been evaluated [114] . Their result comparison shows that its effectiveness influences on soil field should be determined according to actual site environment.…”