The Effect of Crops Cultivation on Soil Erosion Indices Based on Impelero Model in Northeast Iran

Abstract

Abstract. In the present study an integrated neural network based model named ImpelERO was applied to estimate the impact of conventional cropping system on erosion indices, including soil vulnerability index, erosion risk class and soil loss rates by potato, alfalfa and maize plantations. Our results revealed that the soil vulnerability indices ranged from 0.21 to 0.52, 0.15 to 0.41 and 0.2 to 0.5 by potato, alfalfa and maize cultivations, respectively. The values of erosion risk classes by potato and maize cultivation ranged from V1 to V4 in which categorize the region as non-sensitive to very sensitive to erosion and by alfalfa cultivation varied between V1 to V3 which classify the study area as non-sensitive to sensitive to erosion The values of soil losses varied between 7.1 to 59 t ha -1 yr -1 with an average of 15.11 t ha -1 yr -1 by potato, 4.9 to 32.4 t ha -1 yr -1 with an average of 8.42 t ha -1 yr -1 by alfalfa and 6.8 to 52.7 t ha -1 yr -1 with an average of 13.65 t ha -1 yr -1 by maize cultivation. It was concluded that planting perennial alfalfa compared to row planted potato and maize has a great effect on controlling soil erosion and its indices at the study area.

Reviews and syntheses: Agropedogenesis – humankind as the sixth soil-forming factor and attractors of agricultural soil degradation

“…Only a few models of natural pedogenesis in its full complexity are available (Finke, 2012;Finke and Hutson, 2008;Keyvanshokouhi et al, 2016), and the models addressing soil degradation describe more or less individual or a selected few processes but not overall agropedogenesis. For example, various models are available for erosion (Afshar et al, 2018;Arekhi et al, 2012;Ebrahimzadeh et al, 2018;Millward and Mersey, 1999;Morgan et al, 1998;Pournader et al, 2018;Rose et al, 1983), SOM decrease (Chertov and Komarov, 1997;Davidson et al, 2012;Del Grosso et al, 2002;Grant, 1997;Liu et al, 2003;Smith et al, 1997), density increase (Hernanz et al, 2000;Jalabert et al, 2010;Makovnikova et al, 2017;Shiri et al, 2017;Taalab et al, 2013;Tranter et al, 2007) and other processes due to land use. This calls for complex theory-based models of agropedogenesis.…”

“…The dynamics of soil properties in long-term cultivations have revealed a narrowing in the measured values of a given property over time, i.e. a tendency toward the attractor of that property (Alletto and Coquet, 2009;Dalal and Mayer, 1986a, c;Haas et al, 1957;Nyberg et al, 2012;Figs. 3, 4, 5, and S2).…”

Herbaceous Alfalfa plant as a multipurpose crop and predominant forage specie in Pakistan

“…It also helps in providing organic matter to the soil by triggering soil microorganism's activity (Bak and Lee, 2021). A study reveals that alfalfa can control soil erosion to a higher extent when planted along with potato and maize as an intercrop in the same environmental conditions (Sun et al, 2014;Afshar et al, 2018) due to its highly penetrating and wideranging root system (Li et al, 2017) that holds soil particles together. Another study explains that continuous production of corn when planted alone gives around 7.4 tons/acre of soil loss, while crop rotation of corn along with oat and alfalfa, lessens this loss to approximately 2tons/acre (Figure 6, Larson et al, 1997).…”