Erosion Induced Spatio temporal Dynamics of Soil Hydraulic and related Physical Properties under different Tillage Practices

Abstract

newline Soil hydraulic properties (SHPs) are the crucial parameters to understand soil physical newlinebehavior under different tillage regimes in different crop periods. This study aimed to assess the newlinelong term effect (after nine years) of different tillage techniques viz. conventional tillage (CT), newlineminimum tillage (MT), and zero tillage (ZT) in maize-wheat rotation on soil physical properties, newlinehydraulic properties, hydrological behavior and their spatiotemporal variation. The hydraulic newlineconductivity and pore characteristics were derived from steady-state water flux (q), measured newlineusing hood infiltrometer at 0, and#8722;10, and and#8722;30 mm pressure head for each treatment. Results newlineshowed that the seasonal effect on saturated hydraulic conductivity (ks), near saturated hydraulic newlineconductivity k(h), invers of capillary length (and#945;), and hydraulic active porosity (and#400;) values were newlinesignificantly different at p and#8804; 0.05 for conventional tillage treatment. In contrast, no significant newlinedifference was found in zero tillage treatment at p and#8804; 0.05. Significantly higher ks, k(h), and and#400; newlinevalues were observed in ZT than CT and MT at p and#8804; 0.05. The spearmen s analysis was used to newlineestablish the correlation between the saturated and near-saturated hydraulic conductivity with newlineother soil parameters such as bulk density, aggregate mean weight diameter and soil organic newlinecarbon. A multivariate analysis of variance of the saturated hydraulic conductivity showed a newlinesignificant difference at p and#8804; 0.01 with time and tillage treatments. The results showed a newlinesignificant improvement in hydraulic conductivity during the wheat-growing season when newlinecompared after harvesting of maize crop. The average pore radii gt 0.50 mm conducted 63.60, newline68.01, and 75.97 % of total flow at 0 mm pressure head in the corresponding water-conducting newlinemacroporosity of 0.00030, 0.00044, and 0.00069 % of soil volume under CT, MT, and ZT newlinetreatments, respectively. Furthermore, the event basis runoff and soil loss were monitored and newlineanalyzed during the monsoon seasons (June to Sep