Effects of agricultural management on surface soil properties and soil–water losses in eastern Spain

The immediate effectiveness of barley straw mulch in reducing soil erodibility and surface runoff generation in Mediterranean vineyards

“…Rainfall-induced soil erosion risk in the Mediterranean is especially high during summer storms or the early wet season, when plant cover is low (García-Orenes et al, 2009;Taguas et al, 2015). Soil loss is enhanced in cropped soils due to soil management and tillage practices (Blavet et al, 2009;Boardman et al, 1990;Boix-Fayos et al, 2005;Cerdan et al, 2010;Gómez et al, 1999;Vanwalleghem et al, 2011).…”

“…For these reasons, adequate soil management practices are needed to contribute to a more sustainable viticulture, which includes evaluation to determine whether they are acceptable to the farmers who will have to utilize them (Galati et al, 2015;Marques et al, 2015). The most common soil management techniques in Mediterranean countries consist of tillage (mechanical weeding) and no-tillage (chemical weeding) operations (García-Orenes et al, 2009), and both of them generally result in bare soils during the entire year Lasanta and Sobrón, 1988;Vaudour et al, 2015). However, alternative and more conservation-minded soil management practices have also been used like catch crops (Bonfante et al, 2015;García-Orenes et al, 2009), mulching (Jordán et al, 2011;Costantini et al, 2015), hydromulching (Prats et al, 2013), geotextiles (Giménez-Morera et al, 2010), natural grassing (Raclot et al, 2009) and rock fragments (Blavet et al, 2009).…”

“…In particular, the use of catch crops, the implementation of no-tillage or reduced tillage systems, the addition of chipped pruned branches and the use of straw mulches are some of the soil management practices that have been applied on rain-fed experimental orchards in eastern Spain to reduce the high erosion rates (García-Orenes et al, 2009). Staff of the Soil Erosion and Degradation Research (SEDER) group have been studying soil erosion processes due to agriculture and cooperating with farmers to find possible solutions to soil erosion issues in vineyards, olive groves, and fruit and almond orchards.…”

Effects of Residue Management and Cropping Systems on Wheat Yield Stability in a Semiarid Mediterranean Clay Soil

“…In fact, agriculture triggers drought, soil degradation and erosion processes [1]. Crop mis-intensification, conventional tillage and over-grazing characterize agricultural systems.…”

Karst bare slope soil erosion and soil quality: a simulation case study

“…The heterogeneity of karst structure is great due to developed fissures, ponors and underground rivers. A part of water and soil enter the underground rivers along with the fissures and the ponors, so that water and soil loss in karst regions is classified into surface loss and underground soil leak, which have obvious difference compared with that in non-karst regions such as agricultural land reported by Cerdà et al (2009aCerdà et al ( , b, 2010 and García-Orenes et al (2009). In non-karst regions, soil erosion is mainly related to surface cover, slope, and rainfall conditions (Cerdà, 2000;Giménez et al, 2010;Biro et al, 2013;Haregeweyn et al, 2013) and it could be prevented if people take reasonable measures (Haile and Fetene, 2012;Prokop and Poręba, 2012;Mandal and Sharda, 2013).…”