Search results for "Soil fertility"
showing 7 items of 77 documents
Early Effects of No-Till Use on Durum Wheat (Triticum durum Desf.): Productivity and Soil Functioning Vary between Two Contrasting Mediterranean Soils
2022
The diffusion of no-tillage (NT) is to be encouraged because of the benefits it can provide in terms of improving soil fertility and counteracting global warming and climate change as part of climate-smart agriculture practices. However, the introduction of this management can be difficult, especially in the first years of application, and can lead to unpredictable yield results depending on the soil type. Therefore, the aim of this experiment was to evaluate the early effect of NT use, compared to the conventional mouldboard ploughing (CT), on two different soils, a clay-loam (GAL) and a sandy-clay-loam soil (SMA), by monitoring a set of 43 different soil and plant variables that were expe…
Impact of climate, soil properties and grassland cover on soil water repellency
2021
Abstract Numerous soil water repellency (SWR) studies have investigated the possible causes of this temporal phenomenon, yet there remains a lack of knowledge on the order of importance of the main driving forces of SWR in the context of changing environmental conditions under grassland ecosystems. To study the separate and combined effects of soil texture, climate, and grassland cover type on inducing or altering SWR, four sites from different climatic and soil regions were selected: Ciavolo (CI, IT), Csolyospalos (CSP, HU), Pwllpeiran (PW, UK), Sekule (SE, SK). The investigated parameters were the extent (determined by repellency indices RI, RIc and RIm) and persistence (determined by wat…
Nutrient impoverishment and limitation of productivity after 20 years of conservation management in wet grasslands of north-western Germany
2009
Abstract European wet grasslands are characterized by high diversity of plant and animal species but are threatened by intensive land use. Although preservation or restoration of species-rich wet grasslands requires low nutrient availability that could be achieved by long-term management, studies monitoring nutrient removal are lacking. Our objective was to assess the long-term effect of management (mowing twice a year without or with PK fertilization for 20 years) on (i) productivity and nutrient removal with the harvest, (ii) the type of nutrient limitation, and (iii) plant species richness in wet grasslands in north-western Germany considering the differences between organic and mineral …
Sediment transport mechanisms and selective removal of soil particles under unsteady-state conditions in a sheet erosion system
2022
Abstract Selective removal of particles and nutrients by water erosion is a key factor in soil erosion studies. Most agricultural soils are located on gentle slopes where fertility is high; however, until now, the main attention on sediment transport mechanisms was paid to high-slope gradients, where soil erosion is intense, but soils are less productive. Despite the importance of sediment size distribution (SSD) and transport mechanisms under unsteady-state conditions, few studies have been done on this issue. Higher sediment concentrations in the early stages of the runoff indicate the need to deal with unsteady-state conditions. To address this issue, sheet erosion experiments were done …
Is it possible to understand a book missing a quarter of the letters? Unveiling the belowground species richness of grasslands
2022
Abstract Knowledge of species richness patterns in plant communities is biased toward its hidden belowground part and is derived only from the part visible aboveground. Studies on the relationship of the above- to belowground parts of plant communities suffer from the lack of a consistent and uniform approach to assess their taxonomic composition, particularly in species-rich ecosystems. This study described the proportion between above- and belowground parts of vegetation in three grassland types along with the environmental factors that affect them, using eDNA metabarcoding and an observer survey. The internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) region was used to analyze the total plant richness…
Role of land set-up systems on soil (physicochemical) conditions
2020
Land reclamation and drainage networks represent one of the most ancient human modifications of the Italian soilscape, where tailored land set-up systems were developed in agro- and forestecosystems in three millennia of man’s activity. Most of once manually maintained land settings are currently scarcely working or even disappeared because of the cost needed for their maintenance and the advent of mechanization that have simplified the field organization. The scarce attention to the soil experienced in the last decades, has accelerated soil erosion and flooding events, which entailed high costs in terms of money and human lives, but also caused reduction of soil thickness, water holding ca…
Shifting Long-Term Tillage to Geotextile Mulching for Weed Control Improves Soil Quality and Yield of Orange Orchards
2023
Weed control in urban and peri-urban orange orchards is challenging due to operational and legislative restrictions. Tillage, besides from negatively affecting soil fertility and microorganisms, is demanding for humans. On the other hand, herbicides are advised against due to the possibility to reach waterbodies from the soil surface. Therefore, in urban and peri-urban areas, instead of tillage and herbicides, mulching with black plastic geotextile fabric is often used. This study aimed at assessing the impact of long-term soil mulching with black plastic geotextile fabric on soil fertility, microbial community and yield of an orange orchard in comparison to conventional tillage. To this ai…