Spatial Variability of Soil Physical and Hydraulic Properties in a Durum Wheat Field: An Assessment by the BEST-Procedure

Abstract

Spatial variability of soil properties at the field scale can determine the extent of agricultural yields and specific research in this area is needed. The general objective of this study was to investigate the relationships between soil physical and hydraulic properties and wheat yield at the field scale and test the BEST-procedure for the spatialization of soil hydraulic properties. A simplified version of the BEST-procedure, to estimate some capacitive indicators from the soil water retention curve (air capacity, ACe, relative field capacity, RFCe, plant available water capacity, PAWCe), was applied and coupled to estimates of structure stability index (SSI), determinations of soil texture and measurements of bulk density (BD), soil organic carbon (TOC) and saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks). Variables under study were spatialized to investigate correlations with observed medium-high levels of wheat yields. Soil physical quality assessment and correlations analysis highlighted some inconsistencies (i.e., a negative correlation between PAWCe and crop yield), and only five variables (i.e., clay + silt fraction, BD, TOC, SSI and PAWCe) were spatially structured. Therefore, for the soil–crop system studied, application of the simplified BEST-procedure did not return completely reliable results. Results highlighted that (i) BD was the only variable selected by stepwise analysis as a function of crop yield, (ii) BD showed a spatial distribution in agreement with that detected for crop yield, and (iii) the cross-correlation analysis showed a significant positive relationship between BD and wheat yield up to a distance of approximately 25 m. Such results have implications for Mediterranean agro-environments management. In any case, the reliability of simplified measurement methods for estimating soil hydraulic properties needs to be further verified by adopting denser measurements grids in order to better capture the soil spatial variability. In addition, the temporal stability of observed spatial relationships, i.e., between BD or soil texture and crop yields, needs to be investigated along a larger time interval in order to properly use this information for improving agronomic management.

Soil Hydrology for a Sustainable Land Management: Theory and Practice

“…This Special Issue collects 12 original contributions focused on soil hydrology and aimed to address the challenging topic of sustainable land management. From a methodological point of view, the contributions involve both field [8][9][10][11]13,19] and laboratory [14,15] experiments, and modelling [6,[16][17][18] studies. The Special Issue includes studies carried out at different spatial scales, from the field-to regional-scales.…”

“…The Special Issue includes studies carried out at different spatial scales, from the field-to regional-scales. A wide range of geographic regions are also covered, including Brazil [11,13], Mexico [16], Mediterranean basin [6,8,10,14,18], and Central [15,17,19] and Western [9] Europe. Specifically, contributions focus on five main topics including (i) land-use change [8,12,18,19], (ii) water use efficiency [14], (iii) erosion risk [6,17], (iv) solute transport [15], and (v) new methods and devices for improved characterization of soil physical and hydraulic properties [9][10][11]16].…”

“…The main goal of this Special Issue (SI) was to present advanced researches on soil infiltration methods, grand water recharges, soil water content dynamics, and about the impact of vegetation type on physical and hydraulic properties of the soil (i.e., water repellency, hydraulic conductivity, soil water content). Contributions of this SI were focused on: BEST-procedure [7] application, for a simple and expeditious method for estimating hydraulic properties of the soil [8][9][10][11]; Steady version of the Simplified method based on a Beerkan Infiltration run (SSBI method) [12] for field saturated hydraulic conductivity (K s ) estimation [13]; Hydrus-1D and SWAP codes for modelling soil water dynamics [11,14,15]; a new low-cost device for the automation of K s measurements in the laboratory [16]. Also, investigations on the topic of rainfall erosivity [6,17], or the impact of land-vegetation cover interaction on soil water content [18] and soil water repellency [19], increased our knowledge on the sustainable management of specific agro-environments.…”

Estimating the Soil Hydraulic Functions of Some Olive Orchards: Soil Management Implications for Water Saving in Soils of Salento Peninsula (Southern Italy)

“…However, both WRC and HCF are variable in space and time, also because of the adopted soil tillage [13], and the choice of alternative soil management such as minimum tillage (MT) or no-tillage (NT) in orchards may represent a crucial factor because they also allow sustainable weed management [10]. Moreover, WRC-HCF determination is costly, time consuming, and/or practically inapplicable at the territorial scale (i.e., extensive farms, irrigation districts, or at larger scales) [14], and new experimental procedures that are cheap and relatively simplified should be selected and tested as a practical alternative to standard methods [15].…”

Correction: Castellini, M., et al. Spatial Variability of Soil Physical and Hydraulic Properties in a Durum Wheat Field: An Assessment by the BEST-Procedure. Water 2019, 11, 1434

“…The authors wish to make the following corrections to this paper [1]: In the front matter, the authors' names should be "Mirko Castellini 1, *, Anna Maria Stellacci 2 , Matteo Tomaiuolo 3 and Emanuele Barca 4 ".…”