Abstract
Soil erosion has been considered a threat for semi-arid lands due to the removal of solid materials by water and wind. Although water erosion is currently considered the most important process of soil degradation, a growing interest has been drawn to the impact of soil tillage. Although numerous studies on tillage erosion have been carried out on arable land using a moldboard plow, a chisel, and a tandem disc for different crops, there are no studies on the effect of shallow tillage on soil redistribution in vineyards. The aim of this work was to evaluate the soil tillage erosion rate in a vineyard using a 13C natural abundance tracer. A strip of soil (C3-C soil) was removed, mixed with C4-C tracer, and replaced. After the installation of the strip, tillage (upslope in one inter-row and downslope in the other inter-row) was performed with a cultivator and soil was collected along the slope with an interval of 0.2 m from the C4-C strip. Soil organic carbon and δ13C were measured and the total mass of translocated soil (T) soil was calculated. The net effect of tillage after two consecutive operations (downslope and upslope tillage) was a T of 49.3 ± 4.2 kg m−1. The estimated annual erosion rate due to tillage in the studied vineyard was 9.5 ± 1.2 Mg ha−1year−1. The contribution of the soil tillage erosion rate was compared with that of water erosion in the same vineyard, and we conclude that tillage is a threat to soil degradation.
Highlights
Agriculture is the land use that contributes to the highest soil losses in all continents and climatic conditions [1,2,3,4,5]
This paper demonstrates that tillage is relevant for understanding soil erosion processes, representing a consistent contribution to total soil removed
Most of the research on tillage erosion has been focused on cereal crops, where tillage takes place once or twice a year using moldboard plowing at 20–30 cm soil depth
Summary
Agriculture is the land use that contributes to the highest soil losses in all continents and climatic conditions [1,2,3,4,5]. The steep slope on which the vineyard usually lies, the low soil fertility, climatic characteristics, and intensive agricultural practices are the main factors contributing to the high erosion rate [11]. Tillage erosion represents the downslope reallocation of soil sediment through tillage practices and could be an important factor in soil and field evolution in the agricultural landscape [14,15]. It is expressed as the translocated soil amount per meter width and is calculated as net soil distribution between downslope and upslope tillage
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