Shade-Grown Coffee in Colombia Benefits Soil Hydraulic Conductivity

Sergio Esteban Lozano-Baez, Yamileth Domínguez-Haydar, Simone Di Prima, Miguel Cooper and Mirko Castellini
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Sergio Esteban Lozano-Baez: Department of Biology, Universidad del Atlántico, Carrera 30 Número 8-49, Puerto Colombia 081001, Colombia
Yamileth Domínguez-Haydar: Department of Biology, Universidad del Atlántico, Carrera 30 Número 8-49, Puerto Colombia 081001, Colombia
Simone Di Prima: Agricultural Department, University of Sassari, Viale Italia, 39, 07100 Sassari, Italy
Miguel Cooper: Luiz de Queiroz School of Agriculture, University of São Paulo, Av. Pádua Dias 11, Piracicaba 13418-900, Brazil
Mirko Castellini: Council for Agricultural Research and Economics, Research Centre for Agriculture and Environment (CREA-AA), Via C. Ulpiani 5, 70125 Bari, Italy

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 14, 1-12

Abstract: Secondary tropical forests and coffee agroforestry systems contain fewer trees than native forests but can positively impact soil hydrological functions, such as water infiltration compared to the pasture land that they replace. However, for both land uses it remains in how far the soil hydraulic characteristics are comparable to that of native forest. Therefore, we investigated the saturated hydraulic conductivity ( K s ) and some hydrophysical soil attributes in four land-use types: (i) a shade-grown coffee; (ii) a natural regenerated forest 15 years ago; (iii) a pasture; and (iv) a reference forest, in the municipality of La Jagua de Ibirico, César department, Colombia. We determined historical land use and conducted soil sampling, using the Beerkan method to determine the K s values. We also measured canopy cover, vegetation height, diameter at breast height and total number of trees in the forest covers. Our results indicate that K s values were similar for the coffee and the reference forest, reflecting the positive effect of trees on soil hydrological functioning in agroforestry systems. Our results suggest that 15 years of forest regeneration after land abandonment in Sub-Andean Forest, can improve the soil hydraulic attributes. Additionally, soil water repellency was observed for the reference forest soil.

Keywords: agroforestry; beerkan method; forest restoration; pasture; soil attributes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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