Search results for "soil conservation"
showing 10 items of 60 documents
Soil wettability, runoff and erodibility of major dry-Mediterranean land use types on calcareous soils
2007
This study examines six land uses (pine woodland, long unburnt scrubland, recently burnt scrubland, orange grove, olive grove and cereal crop), typical for calcareous soils in a dry-Mediterranean region such as eastern Spain, with regard to soil surface water repellency occurrence, hydrological response and erodibility. For each land use, we performed water drop penetration time (WDPT) tests and rainfall simulations respectively on in situ soils at ten replicate plots for extremely dry antecedent conditions in summer 2002 and for wet winter conditions, in early 2003 in the Canyoles river valley. In contrasts to what might have been expected, water repellency was absent or subcritical (WDPT …
Integrating Extensive Livestock and Soil Conservation Policies in Mediterranean Mountain Areas for Recovery of Abandoned Lands in the Central Spanish…
2016
Land abandonment is a global issue with important implications in Mediterranean mountain areas. Abandoned Mediterranean croplands start a process of secondary succession that is initially colonized by grasslands, shrubs and forest. In Mediterranean mountain areas, the process is very slow, so the shrubs remain for decades, preventing livestock from accessing pastureland. Therefore, farmers have to burn or clear the shrubs in order to provide pasture, a practice that has recently been encouraged by several regional governments in Spain. Data from experimental plots of the Aisa Valley Experimental Station in the Spanish Pyrenees allow to evaluate the effects of burning and clearing shrubs on …
Long-term impact of rainfed agricultural land abandonment on soil erosion in the Western Mediterranean basin
2018
[EN] Land abandonment is widespread in the Mediterranean mountains. The impact of agricultural abandonment results in a shift in ecosystem evolution due to changes in soil erosion, but little is known about long-term soil and water losses. This paper uses 11 years of measurements in two paired plots (abandoned vs control) with four subplots to determine how soil and water losses evolved after abandonment within an agricultural parcel. For two years (2004¿2005) both plots were under tillage, and after 2006 one plot was abandoned. The monitored plots measured runoff and sediment concentration after each rainfall event.
Soil loss tolerance in the context of the European Green Deal
2023
Soil erosion by water, and the consequent loss of a non-renewable resource, is a relevant environmental issue which has economic, ecologic, and social repercussions. In the context of the European Green Deal, the increasing awareness of soil Ecosystem Services is leading to give the due relevance to this problem. Notwithstanding the recent soil conservation strategies adopted by the Common Agricultural Policy had positive effects, the concern regarding this topic is drastically increasing for the normalization of extraordinary rainfall events due to climate change. Recent events occurred in Europe demonstrated that landscape protection is often inadequate and interventions to prevent damage…
Soil Science Challenges in a New Era: A Transdisciplinary Overview of Relevant Topics
2020
Transdisciplinary approaches that provide holistic views are essential to properly understand soil processes and the importance of soil to society and will be crucial in the future to integrate distinct disciplines into soil studies. A myriad of challenges faces soil science at the beginning of the 2020s. The main aim of this overview is to assess past achievements and current challenges regarding soil threats such as ero-sion and soil contamination related to different United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) including (1) sustainable food production, (2) ensure healthy lives and reduce environmental risks (SDG3), (3) ensure water availability (SDG6), and (4) enhanced soil carbo…
Soil water erosion on Mediterranean vineyards: A review
2016
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…
Jute bioblanket as a soil rehabilitation strategy in Sorocaba, Brazil: Soil chemistry and SWOT approaches
2019
Made available in DSpace on 2022-04-29T08:28:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2019-09-01 Soil erosion and the invasion of exotic plant species are major constraints to achieve sustainable development around the world. Currently, we find few products devoted concomitantly to combatting soil erosion as well as the establishment of unwanted exotic plants. In this paper, we introduce a new product, called herein a bioblanket, that protects the soil and impedes the establishment of exotic plant species. This product is of simple design, and to manufacture it, we use two biodegradable materials: jute tissue and grass wastes. We designed this product to combat soil erosion and …
Using plot soil loss distribution for soil conservation design
2011
Abstract Soil conservation design is generally based on the estimation of average annual soil loss but it should be developed taking into account storms of a given return period. However, use of frequency analysis in soil erosion studies is relatively limited. In this paper, an investigation on statistical distribution of soil loss measurements was firstly carried out using a relatively high number of simultaneously operating plots of different lengths, λ (11, 22, 33 and 44 m) at the experimental station of Sparacia (southern Italy). Using a simple normalization technique, the analysis showed that the probability distribution of the normalized soil loss is independent of both the scale leng…
Estimating soil loss of given return period by USLE-M-type models
2020
Many field investigations have clearly shown that rare and severe events control total soil erosion occurring over a long time period with up to 92% of total soil erosion over a 7‐year period resulting from just three daily events. Therefore, soil conservation strategies should be developed taking into account large events rather than long‐term average erosion. From an engineering point of view, establishing the soil loss of a given return period is needed. This can be obtained by the frequency analysis of soil loss measurements or by suitable soil erosion models. The USLE‐M modified and USLE‐M based are two empirical Universal Soil Loss Equation‐Modified (USLE‐M) type models which were dev…
SOILPRO: a LIFE+ project implementing soil monitoring and protection together with regional stakeholders of Sicily and Peloponnese.
2011
According to the Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection, the LIFE+ ENV/IT/00428 SOILPRO project (http://www.soilpro.eu) has the overall objective of slowing down the progress of soil degradation in EU Member States, and supporting local and regional authorities (LRAs) in the identification and monitoring of risk areas. The monitoring of the on-going soil degradation processes and the evaluation of different protection measures are realized through a web-based application (SMS – Soil Monitoring System), developed according to data and knowledge obtained from the different project partners. The SMS was initially applied on the whole Sicily (Italy) and Peloponnese (Greece) regions and then test…