Mulching practices for reducing soil water erosion: A review

Abstract Among the soil conservation practices that are used, mulching has been successfully applied to reduce soil and water losses in different contexts, such as agricultural lands, fire-affected areas, rangelands and anthropic sites. In these contexts, soil erosion by water is a serious problem, especially in semi-arid and semi-humid areas of the world. Although the beneficial effects of mulching are known, further research is needed to quantify them, especially in areas where soil erosion by water represents a severe threat. In the literature, there are still some uncertainties about how to maximize the effectiveness of mulching to reduce the soil and water loss rates. Given the serious…

Morphological Similarity of Channels: From Linear Erosional Features (Rill, Gully) to Alpine Rivers

Soil water erosion on Mediterranean vineyards: A review

Soil water erosion on cultivated lands represents a severe threat to soil resources in the world, and especially in Mediterranean areas, due to their topographic, edaphic and climatic conditions. Among the cultivated lands, vineyards deserve a particular attention because, aside representing one of the most important crops in terms of income and employment, they also have proven to be the form of agricultural use that causes one of the highest soil losses. Although the topic of soil water erosion on vineyards has been studied, it still raises uncertainties, due to the high variability of procedures for data acquisition, which consists into different scales of analysis and measurement method…

Morphological Similarity of Channels: From Linear Erosional Features (Rill, Gully) to Alpine Rivers

The geometric characteristics of incised features such as channels, rills, ephemeral gully, gully, represent the erosional transport regime and the fluvial dynamic equilibrium, and thus it is critical for the understanding of the long-term evolution of natural, agricultural, and anthropogenic landscapes. This paper examines the morphological similarity of channelized erosion in two different environments such as Alpine landscapes and cultivated hillslopes. The first dataset comprises six rivers in the Italian Alps, three in the Carnia region and three in the Dolomites, where erosion is mainly the effect of discharges with high sediment loads or landslides and debris flows. The agricultural …

Rainfall simulation and Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry for the analysis of soil water erosion in Mediterranean vineyards

[EN] Soil water erosion is a serious problem, especially in agricultural lands.Among these, vineyards deserve attention, because they constitute for the Mediterranean areas a type of land use affected by high soil losses. A significant problem related to the study of soil water erosion in these areas consists in the lack of a standardized procedure of collecting data and reporting results, mainly due to a variability among the measurement methods applied. Given this issue and the seriousness of soil water erosion in Mediterranean vineyards, this works aims to quantify the soil losses caused by simulated rainstorms, and compare them with each other depending on two different methodologies: (…

The immediate effectiveness of barley straw mulch in reducing soil erodibility and surface runoff generation in Mediterranean vineyards

Soil and water loss in agriculture is a major problem throughout the world, and especially in Mediterranean areas. Non-conservation agricultural practices have further aggravated the situation, especially in vineyards, which are affected by one of the highest rates of soil loss among cultivated lands. Therefore, it is necessary to find the right soil practices for more sustainable viticulture. In this regard, straw mulching has proven to be effective in other crop and fire affected soils, but, nonetheless, little research has been carried out in vineyards. This research tests the effect of barley straw mulching on soil erosion and surface runoff on vineyards in Eastern Spain where the soil …