Water dynamics in soil-plant systems under grain farming in northern Kazakhstan

The water dynamics and budget in soil-plant ecosystems under dry farming in northern Kazakhstan were investigated for two consecutive years from autumn in 1998 to the end of the cropping season in 2000. In total, 12 plots were established at the experimental farm of Barayev Kazakh Research and Production Center of Grain Farming, Shortandy, and the soil moisture content up to the 90 cm depth was measured several times throughout the period. In spite of snow management during the winter time, in which parallel snow rows were developed in order to accumulate additional snowfall between the rows, the increase in the soil moisture content at the time of thawing widely ranged from -40 to 74 mm in 1999 and from -6 to 84 mm in 2000, respectively. Monitoring of the soil temperature revealed that, in the plots after fallow, a higher moisture content in the frozen subsurface soil layer was responsible for the slow thawing there, resulting in slower water percolation from the overlying layers of the profile and in water loss through enhanced evaporation and possible surface runoff. After thawing, the soil moisture content decreased throughout the cropping season, except during several rainfall events. The evapotranspiration was estimated to range between 194 and 259 mm during the cropping season. The biomass and yield of wheat at harvest time were linearly correlated with the estimated evapotranspiration, indicating that crop production here was mostly determined by the amounts of available water. The initial soil moisture content accounted for 27 to 52% of the total evapotranspiration. In the summer fallow plots, 39 to 104 mm more water accumulated in 1999 and 100 to 119 mm in 2000 than in the cropped plots, respectively. Comparison of the water budgets during the pre-cropping and cropping seasons in the plots under fallow and cropping revealed that both summer fallow and snow management could increase the soil moisture content up to approximately 100 mm, but that the benefit of snow management would be occasionally canceled by the effect of the summer fallow. Given the possibly adverse effects of the summer fallow on enhanced decomposition of soil organic matter, we recommend that snow management should be the main approach for capturing water in the studied plots rather than the summer fallow practice. Further studies should be carried out to determine whether soil and / or topographical conditions are more effective for individual water-capturing management and also are more suitable from economic and environmental viewpoints.