Abstract
This study presents the results of the soil hydraulic characterization performed under three land covers, namely pasture, 9-year-old restored forest, and remnant forest, in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Two types of infiltration tests were performed, namely tension (Mini-Disk Infiltrometer, MDI) and ponding (Beerkan) tests. MDI and Beerkan tests provided complementary information, highlighting a clear increase of the hydraulic conductivity, especially at the remnant forest plots, when moving from near-saturated to saturated conditions. In addition, measuring the unsaturated soil hydraulic conductivity with different water pressure heads allowed the estimation of the macroscopic capillary length in the field. This approach, in conjunction with Beerkan measurements, allowed the design better estimates of the saturated soil hydraulic conductivity under challenging field conditions, such as soil water repellency (SWR). This research also reports, for the first time, evidence of SWR in the Atlantic Forest, which affected the early stage of the infiltration process with more frequency in the remnant forest.
Highlights
The United Nations has declared the period 2021–2030 the decade of restoration to scale up existing initiatives, such as the Bonn Challenge, to restore degraded ecosystems [1]
Estimating saturated and unsaturated soil hydraulic conductivities is crucial for interpreting and modeling soil hydrological processes. Knowledge of these properties may provide information on the impact of land use on soils characteristics [8], which are rarely considered in studies of forest restoration [9]
Our results showed that water repellency impacted water infiltration, yielding convex shaped cumulative infiltration curves
Summary
The United Nations has declared the period 2021–2030 the decade of restoration to scale up existing initiatives, such as the Bonn Challenge, to restore degraded ecosystems [1]. It is expected that restoration will help to slow climate change through carbon sequestration, provide food, and increase biodiversity [2], but will have hydrological benefits because of the perceived association between forest cover and soil hydrological ecosystem services [3,4]. In this context, it is necessary to better understand the consequences of forest regrowth on soil hydrological processes, such as water infiltration, which is fundamental to maintain productive soil-water-plant interactions, Appl. The Beerkan method [11]
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