Soil and Nutrient Losses in a Flat Land‐Reclamation District of Central Italy

Abstract

Erosion and nutrient losses represent two of the most important environmental impacts of agriculture. In a field experiment, we compared the impact and productivity of three continuous maize-cropping systems-conventional, low input and environmentally protective-on two contrasting soils (peat and loam soil) within a flat land-reclamation district of Central Italy. This area is characterized by intensive agriculture and the presence of a receiving eutrophic lake. Cumulative runoff, sediment, dissolved and particulate nutrient losses were discontinuously measured over 2years by means of 2-m2 runoff traps. The effect of cropping systems on erosion was influenced by soil type. Conventional showed the highest losses on the loam soil and low input on the peat soil, whereas environmentally protective ensured the best soil protection at both sites. Simple linear regressions were used to quantify the contribution of anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic predictor variables. Runoff was not influenced by the rainfall (more than 75% of variability explained), and soil losses were significantly affected by type of cropping system (23-25% of variability explained). We estimated the magnitude of the erosion on an annual basis by multiple linear regression models. Soil losses were relatively low, remaining below 0·8Mgha-1y-1 at both sites, while dissolved N losses ranged from 0·54 to 1·29kgha-1y-1, and dissolved P losses ranged from 0·50 to 0·80kgha-1y-1 at both sites. These results pointed to the presence of other sources and pathways of contamination in the lake eutrophication process

Implementing Nature-Based Solutions in Rural Landscapes: Barriers Experienced in the PHUSICOS Project

“…The PHUSICOS NBS interventions to be implemented in Italy are located in private land near Lake Massaciuccoli in the region of Tuscany (Figure 6) and are focused on reducing runoff from farmland, with erosion and transport of sediments and pollutants to the aquatic environment [14]. The area is located south-east of Lake Massaciuccoli, a lake roughly at sea level, whereas the areas for the NBS are 1-2 m below sea level and kept dry by a system of pumping stations.…”

Soil Reserves of Potassium: Release and Availability to Lolium perenne in Relation to Clay Minerals in Six Cropland Soils from Eastern China

“…Agriculture is one of the main causes of the desertification of the land, and this is partially due to the exhaustion of the soil nutrients (Kraaijvanger & Veldkamp, 2015;Lü et al, 2016;Lucas-Borja et al, 2016;Udeigwe et al, 2016). There is a need to restore the degraded lands (Chen et al, 2016;Costantini et al, 2016), and the recovery of the nutrients is a key strategy (Gronwald et al, 2015;Silvestri et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2016a). Potassium (K) is an essential element for higher plants; it plays a particularly crucial role in a number of physiological processes vital to growth, yield, quality and stress resistance of all crops (Pettigrew, 2008;Römheld & Kirkby, 2010;Zörb et al, 2014).…”

Land use and land cover changes in the Haean Basin of Korea: Impacts on soil erosion

“…) with a clay content <10%. Studies showed that soils with lower clay and silt contents and bulk density experience more soil erosion (Silvestri et al, 2017;Ouyang et al, 2018). One of the main factors controlling the soil erosion is related to the land use (Sharma et al, 2011).…”