Sediment outflow from mulch treatments at varying land slopes under simulated rainfall conditions
Loading...
Date
2013-07
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand)
Abstract
The problem of soil erosion in India is very serious. About 18.5% of the world’s total soil erosion takes place in India, which is about16.4tons/ha/year.Organic mulches are very effective in preventing soil erosion,reduce sediment transport rate, runoff rate and increasing infiltration. The study was carried out with the objectives to observe the sediment outflow from various mulch treatments at selected land slopes under simulated rainfall conditions by using rainfall simulator of size 10 m × 1.2 m × 0.5 m with the locally available soil material collected from College of Agriculture Business Management, Pantnagar. In the present study, paddy straw, hay and trash mulches were selected to observe the effect of mulching in soil loss reduction. The quantity of these three types of mulches were taken as, 6 ton/ha, 8 ton/ha and 10 ton/ha and for each mulch treatment, three rainfall intensities viz. 11cm/h, 13cm/h and 14.65cm/h at 0%, 2% and 4% land slopes were selected. The duration of rainfall was fixed (10 minutes) for every mulch treatment.
The total runoff volume was found to be varying with different mulch rates for particular rainfall input and land slope. The runoff distribution pattern was observed to be increasing with the increase in land slope. The average sediment concentration and outflow was found to be increasing with the increasein land slope,but sediment concentration and outflow decreased with increasing mulch rate for particular land slope and rainfall intensity. The sediment outflow rate for no mulch treated land was higher as compared to trash mulch, hay mulch and paddy straw mulch treated lands. Mathematical relationships were developed for relating sediment outflow rate, sediment concentration,land slope and rainfall intensity for a particular mulch treatment. It was observed that values of sediment outflow rate and average sediment concentration had a good correlation with rainfall intensity and land slope for each mulch treatment. The correlation coefficients of developed models were found to be more than 90%.
Description
Keywords
null