Effects of the excrement and urine of domestic animals applied to a grass field on groundwater quality
2003
Ochiai, H. (Iwate Univ., Morioka (Japan)) | Noborio, K.
Abstract In view of sustainable agriculture it is beneficial to apply the excrement and urine of livestock to farmlands. In Japan degrading water quality has been prohibited by the agricultural-environmental related law. It was, however, little known that pathways of nitrate (N03) in soil, e.g., plant uptake, adsorption by soil, denitrification, and deep percolation. We measured temporal changes in (N03) load in the Andisol profile using time domain reflectometry (TDR) in a grass field where dairy cattle manure was applied. For a rainfall event with a large surface run-off ratio (=0.ll3), rain water reached the groundwater surface at about 250cm deep from the soil surface whereas EC sub mass(the product of electrical conductivity of soil solution and volumetric water content as an indicatcr of N03 sub mass) moved up to 170cm deep. For a rainfall event with a small surface run-off ratio (=0.003), in contrast, both rain water and EC sub mass. reached as deep as 100cm. Thus, it was concluded that in this grass field N03 originated from the dairy cattle manure had not adversely affected groundwater quality. Further research is needed to investigate the long-term effect on groundwater and soil quality
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