Capillary Characteristics of Water and Cations in Multi-layered Reclaimed Soil with Macroporous Subsurface Layer Utilizing Coal Bottom Ash

Abstract

Serious problems in reclaimed land agriculture are high soil salinity and poor vertical drainage, so desalinization in these soils is very difficult. Also, although desalinization is accomplished in reclaimed top soils, before long, soils are resalinized according to capillary rise of salts from the subsurface soils. To resolve these problems, multi-layered soil columns with subsurface layer of macroporous medium utilizing coal bottom ash (CBA) were constructed and the effects of blocked resalinization of these soils were investigated. In this experiment soil samples were collected from Munpo series (coarse-loamy, nonacid, mixed, mesic, typic Fluvaquents). The soil texture was silt loam and the EC was 33.9 dS m -1 . As for groundwater seawater was used and groundwater level of 1 cm from the bottom was maintained. The overall rate of capillary rise was 2.38 cm hr -1 in soil 60 cm column, 0.25 cm hr -1 in topsoil (30 cm) + CBA (5 cm) + subsurface soil (10 cm) column and 0.08 cm hr -1 in topsoil (30 cm) + CBA (10 cm) + subsurface soil (10 cm) column. In multi-layered soil columns with CBA 20, 30 cm layer, wetting front due to capillary rise could not be seen in top soil layer. After 70 days capillary rise experiment water soluble Na+ accumulated in top soil of soil columns with CBA 20, 30 cm was diminished by 92.8, 96.5% respectively in comparison with Na+ accumulated in top soil of soil 60 cm column because CBA layer cut off capillary rise of salts from the subsurface soil. From these results we could conclude that the macroporous layer utilizing CBA placed at subsurface layer cut off capillary rise of solutes from subsurface soil, resulting in lowered level of salinity in top soil and this method can be more effective in newly reclaimed saline soil.