Impact of Duration of Land Abandonment on Infiltration and Surface Runoff in Acidic Sandy Soil

Lucia Toková, Slavomír Hološ, Peter Šurda, Jozef Kollár and Ľubomír Lichner
Additional contact information
Lucia Toková: Institute of Hydrology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská cesta 9, 841 04 Bratislava, Slovakia
Slavomír Hološ: Institute of Hydrology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská cesta 9, 841 04 Bratislava, Slovakia
Peter Šurda: Institute of Hydrology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská cesta 9, 841 04 Bratislava, Slovakia
Jozef Kollár: Institute of Landscape Ecology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Štefánikova 3, 814 99 Bratislava, Slovakia
Ľubomír Lichner: Institute of Hydrology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská cesta 9, 841 04 Bratislava, Slovakia

Agriculture, 2022, vol. 12, issue 2, 1-15

Abstract: Sandy soils are less fertile and, therefore, often abandoned in the Central European region. Land abandonment can cause the recovery of ecosystems by the replacement of crop species by vegetation that disperses from surrounding habitats and will be subsequently established (secondary succession). The objective of this study was to find the impact of secondary succession during more than 30 years of lasting abandonment of agricultural fields with acidic sandy soil on infiltration and surface runoff. The method of space-for-time substitution was used so that the fields abandoned at different times were treated as a homogeneous chronosequence. The impact of abandonment on infiltration and surface runoff was characterized by the changes in soil organic carbon content, pH, water and ethanol sorptivity, hydraulic conductivity, water drop penetration time, repellency index, time to runoff, and surface runoff coefficient. It was found that the abandoned soils previously subjected to agriculture showed a decrease in pH, a significant increase in soil water repellency, and a decrease in infiltration, which can lead to serious problems in terms of surface runoff and soil erosion. The pH(H 2 O) and pH(KCl) decreased monotonously and ethanol sorptivity did not change significantly during abandonment. The time to runoff did not change significantly between 10 and 30 years of abandonment, and it was not measured after 1 year of abandonment because no runoff occurred. The dependence of the other characteristics on the duration of field abandonment was not unambiguous. Water sorptivity and hydraulic conductivity showed a decrease between 1 and 10 years followed by a slight increase between 10 and 30 years of abandonment. On the other hand, soil organic carbon content, water drop penetration time, repellency index, and surface runoff coefficient showed an increase between 1 and 10 years followed by a slight decrease between 10 and 30 years of abandonment. To prevent soil water repellency and its consequences in sandy soils, an adequately high soil water content should be maintained, and mixed forest afforestation should be preferred to pine afforestation. This is extremely important in the context of climate change and the increasing frequency of prolonged dry periods.

Keywords: land abandonment; sandy soil; water repellency; infiltration; retention; runoff (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/12/2/168/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/12/2/168/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:12:y:2022:i:2:p:168-:d:732855

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().