Abstract
Soil erosion in vineyards is considered as an environmental concern as it depletes soil fertility and causes damage in the fields and downstream. High soil and water losses decrease soil quality, and subsequently, this can reduce the quality of the grapes and wine. However, in specialized journals of viticulture and enology, soil erosion studies are not present. This paper surveys the soil erosion losses in the vineyards of Celler del Roure, Eastern Spain, as an example of Mediterranean vineyards. We applied rainfall simulation experiments (10 plots) using a small portable rainfall simulator and 55 mm h−1 in one hour to characterize soil erodibility, runoff discharge, and soil erosion rates under low-frequency–high-magnitude rainfall events at different positions along the vine inter-row areas. We found that 30% of the rainfall was transformed into superficial runoff, the sediment concentration was 23 g L−1, and the soil erosion rates reached 4.1 Mg ha−1 h−1; these erosion rates are among the highest found in the existing literature. We suggest that the vineyard management should be improved to reduce land degradation, and also should be shifted to sustainable agricultural production, which could improve grape and wine quality.
Highlights
Soil quality is one of the most important parameters that affects the production of resources in agricultural fields [1], being especially important in vineyards and their final products such as grapes, wine or raisins [2,3]
The rock fragment cover has an average value of 17%, and 25% and 12% as the maximum and minimum values, respectively
The time needed to pond the surface, to allow for runoff generation, and to reach the outlet of the plot can be considered as fast in comparison to other land uses such as persimmons [44], apricots [36], almonds [45], or olive orchards [46]
Summary
Soil quality is one of the most important parameters that affects the production of resources in agricultural fields [1], being especially important in vineyards and their final products such as grapes, wine or raisins [2,3]. Vineyards are commonly identified as terroir because they are conditioned by climate and human variables as well [4,5]. During the last two decades, the scientific community was aware of the driving factors that enhance soil degradation in vineyards, and soil erosion is a key factor in desertification processes in vineyards [9]. The most common driving factors for soil erosion are high slope angles, a lack of vegetation cover, the use of heavy machinery, the trampling effect, spatial variability of soil properties, the age of the plantation, and extreme rainfall events [10,11,12,13,14].
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