Reducing soil erosion and nutrient loss on sloping land under crop-mulberry management system

Fan, Fangling; Xie, Deti; Wei, Chaofu; Ni, Jiupai; Yang, John; Tang, Zhenya; Zhou, Chuan

Reducing soil erosion and nutrient loss on sloping land under crop-mulberry management system

2015

Sloping croplands could result in soil erosion, which leads to non-point source pollution of the aquatic system in the Three Gorges Reservoir Region. Mulberry, a commonly grown cash plant in the region, is traditionally planted in contour hedgerows as an effective management practice to control soil erosion and non-point source pollution. In this field study, surface runoff and soil N and P loss on sloping land under crop-mulberry management were investigated. The experiments consisted of six crop-mulberry treatments: Control (no mulberry hedgerow with mustard-corn rotation); T1 (two-row contour mulberry with mustard-corn rotation); T2 (three-row contour mulberry with mustard-corn rotation); T3 (border mulberry and one-row contour mulberry with mustard-corn rotation); T4 (border mulberry with mustard-corn rotation); T5 (two-row longitudinal mulberry with mustard). The results indicated that crop-mulberry systems could effectively reduce surface runoff and soil and nutrient loss from arable slope land. Surface runoff from T1 (342.13 m³ hm⁻²), T2 (260.6 m³ hm⁻²), T3 (113.13 m³ hm⁻²), T4 (114 m³ hm⁻²), and T5 (129 m³ hm⁻²) was reduced by 15.4, 35.6, 72.0, 71.8, and 68.1 %, respectively, while soil loss from T1 (0.21 t hm⁻²), T2 (0.13 t hm⁻²), T3 (0.08 t hm⁻²), T4 (0.11 t hm⁻²), and T5 (0.12 t hm⁻²) was reduced by 52.3, 70.5, 81.8, 75.0, and 72.7 %, respectively, as compared with the control. Crop-mulberry ecosystem would also elevate soil N by 22.3 % and soil P by 57.4 %, and soil nutrient status was contour-line dependent.

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