Soil organic carbon stocks assessment in Mediterranean natural areas: A comparison of entire soil profiles and soil control sections

Parras-Alcántara, Luis; Lozano‐García, Beatriz; Brevik, Eric C.; Cerdà, Artemi

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2015.03.039

Cited by 87 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…More vegetation means more organic matter and more organic matter results in a lower bulk density (Fig. 2c) (Brevik and Fenton, 2012;Srinivasarao et al, 2014;Parras-Alcántara et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of soil management techniques on soil water erosion in apricot orchards

Keesstra

Pereira

Novara

et al. 2016

Science of The Total Environment

402

217

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Soil erosion is extreme in Mediterranean orchards due to management impact, high rainfall intensities, steep slopes and erodible parent material. Vall d'Albaida is a traditional fruit production area which, due to the Mediterranean climate and marly soils, produces sweet fruits. However, these highly productive soils are left bare under the prevailing land management and marly soils are vulnerable to soil water erosion when left bare. In this paper we study the impact of different agricultural land management strategies on soil properties (bulk density, soil organic matter, soil moisture), soil water erosion and runoff, by means of simulated rainfall experiments and soil analyses. Three representative land managements (tillage/herbicide/covered with vegetation) were selected, where 20 paired plots (60 plots) were established to determine soil losses and runoff. The simulated rainfall was carried out at 55 mm h-1 in the summer of 2013 (<8% soil moisture) for one hour on 0.25 m2 circular plots. The results showed that vegetation cover, soil moisture and organic matter were significantly higher in covered plots than in tilled and herbicide treated plots. However, runoff coefficient, total runoff, sediment yield and soil erosion were significantly higher in herbicide treated plots compared to the others. Runoff sediment concentration was significantly higher in tilled plots. The lowest values were identified in covered plots. Overall, tillage, but especially herbicide treatment, decreased vegetation cover, soil moisture, soil organic matter, and increased bulk density, runoff coefficient, total runoff, sediment yield and soil erosion. Soil erosion was extremely high in herbicide plots with 0.91 Mg ha-1 h-1 of soil lost; in the tilled fields erosion rates were lower with 0.51 Mg ha-1 h-1. Covered soil showed an erosion rate of 0.02 Mg ha-1 h-1. These results showed that agricultural management influenced water and sediment dynamics and that tillage and herbicide treatment should be avoided

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of soil management techniques on soil water erosion in apricot orchards

Keesstra

Pereira

Novara

et al. 2016

Science of The Total Environment

402

217

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“…Many studies that investigate CEC only sample to about 0-20 cm depth (Laird et al, 2010;Halvorson et al, 2011;Kweon et al, 2013). Soil OC tends to be concentrated in these shallow layers and decrease rapidly with depth but also varies considerably from place to place even in surface soils (Parras-Alcántara et al, 2015). This combination of relatively high concentrations in the surface soil layers, the naturally high CEC of soil organic matter, and a high natural variability in surface soils gives OC a great opportunity to significantly contribute to variations in the CEC of surface soils.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling soil cation exchange capacity in multiple countries

Khaledian

Brevik

Pereira

et al. 2017

CATENA

102

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A B S T R A C TCation exchange capacity (CEC), as an important indicator for soil quality, represents soil's ability to hold positively charged ions. We attempted to predict CEC using different statistical methods including monotone analysis of variance (MONANOVA), artificial neural networks (ANNs), principal components regressions (PCR), and particle swarm optimization (PSO) in order to compare the utility of these approaches and identify the best predictor. We analyzed 170 soil samples from four different nations (USA, Spain, Iran and Iraq) under three land uses (agriculture, pasture, and forest). Seventy percent of the samples (120 samples) were selected as the calibration set and the remaining 50 samples (30%) were used as the prediction set. The results indicated that the MONANOVA (R 2 = 0.82 and Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) = 6.32) and ANNs (R 2 = 0.82 and RMSE = 5.53) were the best models to estimate CEC, PSO (R 2 = 0.80 and RMSE = 5.54) and PCR (R 2 = 0.70 and RMSE = 6.48) also worked well and the results were very similar to each other. While the most influential variables for the various countries and land uses were different and CEC was affected by different variables in different situations, clay (positively correlated) and sand (negatively correlated) were the most influential variables for predicting CEC for the entire data set. Although the MANOVA and ANNs provided good predictions of the entire dataset, PSO gives a formula to estimate soil CEC using commonly tested soil properties. Therefore, PSO shows promise as a technique to estimate soil CEC. Establishing effective pedotransfer functions to predict CEC would be productive where there are limitations of time and money, and other commonly analyzed soil properties are available.

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“…Such a sampling method mixed the pedogenetic horizons in a soil profile. Furthermore, the calculation of SOCD, TCD and TND might be indirectly affected due to the direct influences on bulk density, SOCC, TCC, TNC, gravel content and thickness of soil layers (Parras-Alcántara et al, 2015a). Nowadays there are different opinions on whether SOC stock should be inventoried by genetic horizons in entire soil profiles or using depth increments within a soil control section.…”

Section: Influence Of Sampling Strategymentioning

confidence: 99%