Search results for "Plough"
showing 10 items of 23 documents
Land Use History and Site Formation Processes at the Punic Site of Pauli Stincus in West Central Sardinia
2013
The site of Pauli Stincus is located near the town of Terralba, on the inland shores of the Gulf of Oristano in west central Sardinia, Italy, and was occupied between the mid-4th and the late 2nd century B.C. The site and its surroundings were the object of a joint archaeopedological and geomorphological study, which complemented the data from archaeological excavations. This study allowed us to evaluate the suitability of the different landscape and soil components for crop production in the Punic period. The discovery of a buried plow soil at the site's edge enabled us to identify a set of agricultural practices carried out by Punic farmers. These included the removal of sandy topsoil to …
Noise levels of a track-laying tractor during field operations in the vineyard
2013
Noise in agriculture is one of the risk factors to be taken into account in the assessment of the health and safety of workers; in particular, it is known that the tractor is a source of high noise. The Italian Low Decree 81/2008 defined the requirements for assessing and managing noise risk identifying a number of procedures to be adopted at different noise levels to limit workers exposure. This paper concerns the analysis of the noise risk arising from the use of a tracklaying tractor during field operations carried out in the vineyard. The objective of this study was to evaluate the noise level that comes close to the ear of the operator driving the tractor measuring the values of equiva…
Evaluation of cropping systems for management of herbicide-resistant populations of blackgrass (Alopecurus myosuroides Huds.)
2001
Abstract Simplification of cropping systems often leads to an increase in weed populations which require an intensive use of herbicides to maintain populations at an acceptable level. Due to a heavy reliance on herbicides and a lack of cultural control measures, herbicide-resistant blackgrass (Alopecurus myosuroides Huds.) biotypes appeared recently in France. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of different cropping systems on a population of herbicide-resistant blackgrass. Two crop rotations, one consisting exclusively of winter crops and another including spring crops, were assessed over a three-year period. Crop rotation was combined with different cultural practices (mo…
Reduced herbicide use does not increase crop yield loss if it is compensated by alternative preventive and curative measures
2018
Herbicide use must be reduced because of environmental and health issues. This raises the question of whether weeds and the resulting crop yield loss will increase. Previous studies analysing relationships between herbicide use intensity, weeds and yield loss suffer from methodological shortcomings in terms of weed flora and farm diversity as well as temporal scales. Here, we collected data on 272 arable cropping systems from one Spanish and six French regions, from farm surveys, the Biovigilance-Flore network, expert opinion, cropping system trials, crop advisors and scientists. Each system was simulated over 27 years and with 10 weather repetitions, using the virtual-field model FlorSys. …
Modeling lead input and output in soils using lead isotopic geochemistry
2004
The aim of this study is to model downward migration of lead from the plow layer of an experimental site located in Versailles (about 15 km southwest of Paris, France). Since 1928, samples have been collected annually from the topsoil of three control plots maintained in bare fallow. Thirty samples from 10 different years were analyzed for their lead and scandium contents and lead isotopic compositions. The fluxes are simple because of the well-controlled experimental conditions in Versailles: only one output flux, described as a first-order differential function of the anthropogenic lead pool, was taken into account; the inputs were exclusively ascribed to atmospheric deposition. The combi…
Assessing non-chemical weeding strategies through mechanistic modelling of blackgrass (Alopecurus myosuroides Huds.) dynamics
2010
; Because of environmental and health safety issues, it is necessary to develop strategies that do not rely on herbicides to manage weeds. Introducing temporary grassland into annual crop rotations and mechanical weeding are the two main features that are frequently used in integrated and organic cropping systems for this purpose. To evaluate the contribution of these two factors in interaction with other cropping system components and environmental conditions, the present study updated an existing biophysical model (i.e. AlomySys) that quantifies the effects of cropping system on weed dynamics. Based on previous experiments, new sub-models were built to describe the effects on plant survi…
The effect of Shallow Tillage on soil erosion in a semi-arid vineyard
2019
Soil erosion has been considered a threat for semi-arid lands due to the removal of solid materials by water and wind. Although water erosion is currently considered the most important process of soil degradation, a growing interest has been drawn to the impact of soil tillage. Although numerous studies on tillage erosion have been carried out on arable land using a moldboard plow, a chisel, and a tandem disc for different crops, there are no studies on the effect of shallow tillage on soil redistribution in vineyards. The aim of this work was to evaluate the soil tillage erosion rate in a vineyard using a 13C natural abundance tracer. A strip of soil (C3-C soil) was removed, mixed with C4-…
Soil interpretation in the context of anthropedogenic transformations and pedotechniques application
2018
Abstract Following a long and vigorous study carried out by the International Committee on Anthropogenic Soils (ICOMANTH), the Soil Taxonomy (ST) classification system recently incorporated a number of changes to include Human-Altered and Human-Transported soils, generally called anthropogenic soils. These changes underwent careful scrutiny as they affect the current classification of existing soil series, and as the proposals and logics are as yet untested against existing data and descriptions. Particular attention was given to the diagnostic characteristics of the anthropogenic soils and to the Subgroups for Human-Altered and Human-Transported soils. In this study, we consider a frequent…
Frequency composition of traction and tillage forces on a mole plough
1997
Field experiments were carried out in order to quantify the variations of the traction and tillage forces on a mole plough, in the case of four clayey soils of Eastern France. The same tractor-implement system, the same forward working speed (1 m s−1) and the same length of ploughing (20 m) were used. Specially designed strain gauge transducers applied to the system delivered a signal which was numerised and analysed in terms of power spectral density (PSD) function. The frequency composition of the traction and tillage forces consisted of interactions between soil and tool as well as vibrations of the tractor-implement system. Low frequencies (0–2 Hz range) were related to the random prope…
Effects of tilling methods on soil penetration resistance, organic carbon and water stable aggregates in a vineyard of semiarid Mediterranean environ…
2018
Tillage, especially in semiarid Mediterranean environment, enhances the mineralization process of soil organic matter (SOM) and, in turn, decreases aggregate stability. Furthermore, continuous tillage leads to the formation of plough pan beneath the tilled layer. In the present study, we investigated the effect of an innovative self-propelled machine (spading machine, SM) for shallow tillage on SOM, water stable aggregates (WSA) and soil penetration resistance (PR). Such effects were compared to those of chisel plough (CP), rotary tiller (RT) and no tillage (NT). Each tilling method was applied up to a depth of 15 cm, whereas in NT only a brush cutter was used for weed control. Soil analyse…