Influence of Land Use and Land Cover on Hydraulic and Physical Soil Properties at the Cerrado Agricultural Frontier

Emily Ane Dionizio and Marcos Heil Costa
Additional contact information
Emily Ane Dionizio: Department of Agricultural Engineering, Federal University of Viçosa (UFV), Viçosa, MG 36570-900, Brazil
Marcos Heil Costa: Department of Agricultural Engineering, Federal University of Viçosa (UFV), Viçosa, MG 36570-900, Brazil

Agriculture, 2019, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Western Bahia is one of the most active agricultural frontiers in the world, which raises concern about its natural resources conservation, especially regarding water availability. This study evaluated the influence of five different land uses and land covers on physical and hydraulic soil properties, and developed pedotransfer functions to derive regional hydraulic properties. Significant changes between physical and hydraulic soil properties under agricultural areas and under natural vegetation cover were found, reinforcing that agricultural activity may influence the soil water balance. Cerrado and Forest formation areas have higher infiltration rates ( K s a t ) compared to managed areas, with average values of 16.29 cm h −1 , and 14.47 cm h −1 , while irrigated croplands, rainfed croplands and pasture areas have much smaller infiltration rates, with K s a t equal to 3.01 cm h −1 , 6.22 cm h −1 and 5.01 cm h −1 , respectively. Our results suggest that the agriculture practices do not directly affect the vertical nature of hydrological flowpath, except in the case of intensive irrigated agriculture areas, where K s a t reduction can lead to erosive processes favoring organic matter losses, and decreases in productivity and soil quality. Impacts of land use change on hydraulic and physical soil properties are a reality in the Cerrado agriculture frontier and there is an urgent need to monitor how these changes occur over time to develop effective mitigation strategies of soil and water conservation.

Keywords: land use change; soil physical properties; soil hydraulic properties; Western Bahia; Cerrado agriculture frontier (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: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/9/1/24/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/9/1/24/ (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:9:y:2019:i:1:p:24-:d:199582

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 ().