Contemporary Global Issue of Rising Water Scarcity for Agriculture: The Quest for Effective and Feasible Soil Moisture and Free-Water Surface Conservation Strategies

Abstract

There is the need to take seriously the task of conserving soil moisture in agricultural fields and free-water surfaces in reservoirs, especially in recent years of climate change. Many strategies exist for achieving this task and improving the productivity of arable soils. These strategies traditionally come under biological and physical or mechanical measures. Some other relatively new techniques operate neither on physical nor on biological principle. All these measures which operate on different principles frequently overlap. The principles involved, together with the prospects and constraints of the key techniques of conserving soil moisture found in the literature, are reviewed in this paper. Among other considerations, the effectiveness and/or practicability of any one of the techniques depend upon soil type, topography, climate, scale of production, level of technology, and socio-economic status. Such agronomic practices as conservation tillage and live vegetation mulch that maintain infiltration rates often appear to be more beneficial in the long run than engineering structures, especially those that lead to blocking of waterways on the soil surface. However, this review reveals that none of the soil moisture conservation strategies could be credited as universally applicable. Consequently, an integrated approach to soil water management and conservation, where feasible, is considered more appropriate. This is because the different principles involved in the techniques identified to be compatible would readily complement and strengthen one another. Such a multi-mechanistic approach is expected to result in improved efficacy in conserving water resources in soils and open reservoirs

Agronomic evaluation of seedbed and mulching alternatives with plant spacing for dry‐season fluted pumpkin in coarse‐textured tropical soil

“…The many benefits of surface mulch to the soil and the crop grown therein are well known, including maintenance of uniformly high soil water status thus reducing irrigation frequency especially in dry season production (Obalum et al. ). Odiaka et al.…”

Optimizing yield of improved varieties of millet and sorghum under highly variable rainfall conditions using contour ridges in Cinzana, Mali

“…Thus, water availability to crop roots in the soil profile constitutes a major constraint for sustainable production systems [14][15][16][17]. Because of unpredictable rainfall [18] and decreased agricultural productivity, many soil and water conservation technologies such as stone lines, half-moons, contour hedgerows, rock bunds, filter walls, zaï, agroforestry, contour ridges, benches and no-tillage have been developed and are now widespread [19][20][21][22][23]. Tested technologies have shown that they can reduce runoff [16,[24][25][26] and soil erosion [27][28][29], improve water infiltration [12,22,30] and increase soil moisture [20,23,[31][32][33].…”

The oil palm (<i>Elaeis guineensis</i> Jacq): nature’s ecological endowment to eastern Nigeria

“…Palm trees offer the much-needed protection to the soil and the entire environment by at least two mechanisms; (i) ability of the closed tree canopy to intercept the usually high-intensity rainfall, thereby reducing its erosive power upon reaching the ground, and (ii) enhanced structural-hydraulic properties of soils. This implies increased rainwater infiltration/retention in the soil, such that palm trees serve as a biological measure of agricultural water conservation (Obalum et al, 2011). Regarding the required improvements in soil structural-hydraulic properties, oil palm plantation has severally been reported to be superior to arable cropping in southeastern Nigeria (Igwe, 2001;Ogban, 2017;Uzoma and Onwuka, 2018).…”