Potential Benefits of Polymers in Soil Erosion Control for Agronomical Plans: A Laboratory Experiment

Abstract

New management and techniques to reduce soil and water losses are necessary to achieve goals related to sustainability and develop useful agronomical plans. Among the strategies to reduce soil losses, the use of polymers has been studied but little is known about the effect of them on soil aggregates under extreme rainfall conditions. The main aim of this study was to compare the effects of polyacrylamide (PAM) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) on initial soil erosion process activation. We applied both products on soils and soil aggregate stability was measured on polymer treated and control plots. Laboratory erosion plots (pans) were placed on 15% slope, and sequential simulated rainfalls (under dry and wet conditions) with 360 mm h−1 intensity were applied for 12 min. Time to runoff, total runoff, runoff sediment yield, and splash sediment yield were determined. The results show that polymers do not delay runoff initiation; however, they reduced total runoff, sediment yield, and soil transported by the splash. PVA was not effective in reducing the total runoff during the first rainfall being PAM more effective in this way. However, under the sequential rainfall, both polymers obtained positive results, showing PAM some improvements in comparison to PVA. The effect of the polymer to reduce soil transported by splash after performing the second rainfall simulation was clearly demonstrated, meanwhile the effects during the first simulation were not significant. The effectiveness of the polymers on soil aggregates increased with increasing aggregate size. The application of polymers reached the highest efficiency on aggregates of 6.4 mm in diameter.

Vicia sativa Roth. Can Reduce Soil and Water Losses in Recently Planted Vineyards (Vitis vinifera L.)

“…The use of other strategies such as polymers (Yakupoglu et al 2019), terracing (Ramos and Porta 1997), mulches (Smets et al 2008), or contour-ridge tillage (Traore and Birhanu 2019) to reduce the soil losses and improve the soil quality usually results in an extra cost for the farmers. The new agriculture managements to achieve sustainability should reduce the soil erosion rates and should reach the acceptance of the farmers (Marques et al 2015;Cerdà et al 2018a).…”

Soil Management Effects on Soil Water Erosion and Runoff in Central Syria—A Comparative Evaluation of General Linear Model and Random Forest Regression

“…Many other factors such as low soil organic matter, high content of fine particles (i.e., clay, silt), and high bulk density (1.3 g/cm 3 ) provided favorable conditions for runoff initiation and erosion acceleration, which could be observed not only in Syria but in all the Mediterranean region [92][93][94]. Similarly, Cerdà et al [75] pointed out that high soil bulk density is a key factor for the fast ponding and runoff initiation in the dry Mediterranean soils.…”

Structure Stability of Cultivated Soils from Semi-Arid Region: Comparing the Effects of Land Use and Anionic Polyacrylamide Application

“…All those strategies are considered nature-based solutions [63] that are efficient only after some years and also need high investments to become effective. The use of PAM can serve as a suitable alternative strategy to improve soil aggregate and structure stability (e.g., SI) and reduce runoff and soil losses in agriculture [30,70,71] and forest soils that used to be under highly degraded conditions [65,72,73]. That is not only because PAM is an efficient soil amendment [24] but also because it becomes effective immediately after application.…”