Characterization of Surface Runoff, Soil Erosion, Nutrient Loss and their Relationship for Agricultural Plots in India

Abstract

The present study was carried out to explore the existence of relationship among rainfall, runoff, soil loss and nutrient losses from the agricultural plots located at Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India. The natural rainfall generated runoff and soil loss from the 12 agricultural runoff plots (with four land uses namely sugarcane, maize, black gram and fallow land and having slope 5%, 3% and 1% for each land use) were recorded during monsoon period (June 2013 to September 2013). The highest grade plot was found to yield the highest magnitude of runoff (i.e. runoff coefficient) for a given land use and soil type. The soil loss from the experimental plots of various characteristics shown that for given rainfall input, on average, the plots with sugarcane land use were found to produce high amount of soil loss followed by Maize, fallow land and Blackgram. The nutrients losses were very low in the sediment as compared to the dissolved losses. Nutrients concentrations in sediment and runoff water were found to be more during the critical period. The higher limit of seasonal sediment yield obtained from the present study is lower than soil loss tolerance limit of 2.5 to 12.5 t/ha /yr for Indian subcontinent.