Abstract
Conversion of native lands into agricultural use, coupled with poor land management practices, generally leads to changes in soil properties. Understanding the undesirable effects of land-use and land-cover (LULC) changes on soil properties is essential when planning for sustainable land management. This study was conducted in Al Jabal Al Akhdar region, Libya, to assess the effects of land-use and land-cover changes on soil quality inferred by analyzing the relative changes in 17 chemical, physical, and biological soil properties in the upper layer (0–20 cm) of disturbed and undisturbed soil systems. Soil samples were collected from 180 sampling sites with 60 from each of the three types of LULC prevalent in the study area: natural Mediterranean forests (NMF), rainfed agriculture (RA), and irrigated crops (IC). The soil properties of the two agricultural land uses were compared with soil properties under an adjacent natural forest, which served as a control to assess changes in soil quality resulting from the cultivation of deforested land. The results indicate significant reductions in most soil quality indicators under rainfed agriculture as compared to native forest land. Under irrigated agriculture, there were significant changes (p ≤ 0.05) in most of the soil quality indicators, generally, indicating a significant reduction in soil quality, except for improvement of nitrogen and phosphorus levels due to frequent fertilizer application. Our data support the notion that changes in land use and land cover, in the absence of sustainable management measures, induce deterioration of soil properties and ultimately may lead to land degradation and productivity decline.
Highlights
As a Mediterranean region, Libya ranks 17th in the world in terms of land area (1.75 million km2 )
The electrical conductivity (EC) mean values for the three land-use and land-cover (LULC) types were in the order: irrigated crops (IC) (0.54 dS m−1 ) > rainfed agriculture (RA) (0.26 dS m−1 ) ≥ natural Mediterranean forests (NMF) (0.24 dS m−1 ) which differed significantly at p < 0.01 (Table 2), indicating that transforming forest land to agricultural land impacts soil salinity
Variation in EC across LULC is possibly due to the frequent addition of chemical fertilizers in soils under IC, as compared to RA and NMF
Summary
As a Mediterranean region, Libya ranks 17th in the world in terms of land area (1.75 million km ). Limited suitable land and lack of water supplies in Libya are critical constraints on agricultural productivity [1]. With the exception of the sub-humid zone of Al-Jabal Al-Akhdar situated in the northeast on the Mediterranean coast, most Libyan soils are in arid and semi-arid areas, characterized by a lack of water resources, low fertility and poor vegetation. With an annual rainfall of between 400 and 650 mm, the region of Al-Jabal Al-Akhdar is the wettest and greenest part of Libya, supporting some natural Mediterranean forests and highly productive dryland agriculture. The Al-Jabal Al-Akhdar zone accounts for less than 1% of Libya’s total area [4], but covers about 90% of the forest cover in the country. The Al-Jabal Al-Akhdar region has been plagued by extreme vegetation destruction over the past four decades, reducing the acreage of natural vegetation and increasing land degradation
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