Impacts of Agroforestry, Afforestation and Ex-closure Practices on Soil Loss, Runoff and Soil Moisture Storage in Ethiopia

Abstract

In the 21 st century, one of the challenges is land degradation by soil erosion in Ethiopia due to land misuse and soil mismanagement. For reversing degraded land, the county long term efforts and invested in soil and water conservation and still ongoing. To achieve the goals, one of the approaching systems is the implementation of afforestation, agroforestry, and exclosure management of the degraded land by participating all stakeholders from starting households to higher officials as well as donor agencies. The highlighted of the review showed that the interventions of agroforestry, afforestation, and exclosures management impacts on selected ecosystem services such as run-off, soil loss, and moisture storage. Agroforestry was positive on run-off, soil loss, and moisture storage in response ratio (RR) was contributed 5, 9.7, and 1.6, respectively, similarly, afforestation also means reduction of run-off 54% and improvement of soil moisture storage13.2%. Exclosures management was significant role in reducing run-off and soil erosion by 91% and 53 %, respectively, Moreover, resilience and enhanced ecosystem services. Generally, bio-engineering soil and water conservation measures are invisible nails because they networked tied the soils by their root system and against water erosion but also dissipate the energy of raindrops by their shoot system reached to the surface of soil resulting in gradually murdered soil erosion and run-off. Agroforestry, afforestation, and exclosures interventions have been widely invested in the country but most of their impact studies associated with on soil loss, or yield or runoff or soil moisture storage as compared to physical soil and water conservation has given less emphasis so that the scholars should be given attention on Agroforestry, afforestation, and ex-closures quantification loss of soil, sediment yield or water storage Keywords: Agroforestry, afforestation, ex-closures management, soil loss, Ethiopia DOI: 10.7176/CER/14-3-03 Publication date: May 31 st 2022