Terraced Pasture Changes the Soil Moisture Dynamics

Abstract

Climate changes, loss of biodiversity, soil degradation, scarcity and pollution of waters are the problems caused and experienced by society. The conservation methods of soil moisture are important for plant growth and groundwater preservation. The aim at this study was to evaluate the impacts of the terraces on soil moisture and to analyze the efficiency of Ground Penetration Radar (GPR) in the soil moisture determination. Soil moisture was determined by gravimetric and GPR methods in the depths of 0 to 10, 10 to 30, 30 to 60 and, 60 to 100 cm. The water storage in depth was larger and uniform in terraced than in the non-terraced pasture. However, the non terraced pasture has less soil compaction. Thus, the terrace does not guarantee adequate pasture management and other alternatives for sustainable management of cattle and reduction of soil compaction is necessary. The GPR method may be used to estimate the soil water content in volumetric basis in the field of a non-invasive manner. However, there need to study and determine the accuracy in GPR measurement in different methods and soil types.

Land use change drives the spatio-temporal variation of ecosystem services and their interactions along an altitudinal gradient in Brazil

“…In contrast, agroforestry coffee systems are less prone to water runoff and soil erosion (Franco et al 2002;Cannavo et al 2011) and have superior natural pest suppression (Rezende et al 2014). Maintaining trees and adopting terraces can also improve water infiltration and decrease soil erosion in the degraded pastures of the Zona da Mata region (Chen et al 2017;Lopes et al 2019). While the effect of LULC changes on ecosystem services has been studied based on the association between temporal changes in the LULC and ecosystem services provision (Rodríguez-Echeverry et al 2018), our analysis extends these findings by showing the consequences of four common LULC transitions on the complex interactions between ecosystem services.…”