Impact of Potentially Contaminated River Water on Agricultural Irrigated Soils in an Equatorial Climate

Juan M. Trujillo-González, Juan D. Mahecha-Pulido, Marco A. Torres-Mora, Eric C. Brevik, Saskia D. Keesstra and Raimundo Jiménez-Ballesta
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Juan M. Trujillo-González: Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales de la Orinoquia Colombiana ICAOC, Facultad de Ciencias Básicas e Ingeniería, Universidad de los Llanos, Campus Barcelona Villavicencio, 500001 Villavicencio, Colombia
Juan D. Mahecha-Pulido: Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales de la Orinoquia Colombiana ICAOC, Facultad de Ciencias Básicas e Ingeniería, Universidad de los Llanos, Campus Barcelona Villavicencio, 500001 Villavicencio, Colombia
Marco A. Torres-Mora: Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales de la Orinoquia Colombiana ICAOC, Facultad de Ciencias Básicas e Ingeniería, Universidad de los Llanos, Campus Barcelona Villavicencio, 500001 Villavicencio, Colombia
Eric C. Brevik: Department of Natural Sciences, Dickinson State University, Dickinson, ND 58601, USA
Saskia D. Keesstra: Soil Physics and Land Management Group, Wageningen University, Droevendaalsesteeg 4, 6708PB Wageningen, The Netherlands
Raimundo Jiménez-Ballesta: Department of Geology and Geochemistry, Universidad Autónoma, 28049 Madrid, Spain

Agriculture, 2017, vol. 7, issue 7, 1-11

Abstract: Globally, it is estimated that 20 million hectares of arable land are irrigated with water that contains residual contributions from domestic liquids. This potentially poses risks to public health and ecosystems, especially due to heavy metals, which are considered dangerous because of their potential toxicity and persistence in the environment. The Villavicencio region (Colombia) is an equatorial area where rainfall (near 3000 mm/year) and temperature (average 25.6 °C) are high. Soil processes in tropical conditions are fast and react quickly to changing conditions. Soil properties from agricultural fields irrigated with river water polluted by a variety of sources were analysed and compared to non-irrigated control soils. In this study, no physico-chemical alterations were found that gave evidence of a change due to the constant use of river water that contained wastes. This fact may be associated with the climatic factors (temperature and precipitation), which contribute to fast degradation of organic matter and nutrient and contaminants (such as heavy metals) leaching, or to dilution of wastes by the river.

Keywords: trace elements; equatorial area; agricultural land use; wastewater irrigation (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: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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