The Impacts of Vineyard Afforestation on Soil Properties, Water Repellency and Near-Saturated Infiltration in the Little Carpathians Mountains

Andrej Hrabovský,Jozef Kollár,Artemi Cerdà,Pavel Dlapa

doi:10.3390/w12092550

Andrej Hrabovský, Jozef Kollár + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/w12092550

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Abstract

Vineyards are a 7000-year-old land-use tradition and both management and abandonment have result in altered soil properties. These have a great effect on water resources and soil services, and this inspired our investigation into the effects of land-use and land-use change on soils in the Modra wine-growing region in South-western Slovakia. Ten topsoil samples were taken at each of the seven research sites (n = 70) on granite parent material in cultivated and afforested vineyards and original forest soils. Laboratory analyses included determination of soil texture, organic carbon content, soil pH, and water repellency. This was supplemented by infiltration measurements under near-saturated conditions at the vineyard and afforested study sites. Studied soils have a low clay content and a high proportion of sand. The vineyard soils have significantly higher pH than the forest and afforested soils because the naturally acidic soils have been limed. The forest and afforested soils have similar properties, with higher organic carbon content. This makes them strongly to extremely water repellent and contrasts sharply with the wettability of cultivated vineyard soils. One afforested site, however, was less acidic and therefore was considered transitional between forest and vineyard soils. Our infiltration measurements established the influence of soil water repellency on the infiltration process, and our results highlighted that the infiltration rate in the vineyard soils was significantly higher than in afforested soils. The infiltration rate also gradually increased over time in afforested soils due to decreasing water repellency. Physically impossible negative sorptivity values in afforested soils were noted because of changes in water repellency during the infiltration process. Finally, we conclude that soil afforestation results in increased soil water repellency and a subsequent reduction in the infiltration rate at the matrix scale.

Highlights

Soil has a crucial influence on matter and energy cycles, and knowledge of these cycles is most important in understanding the Earth’s surface geography
The soils here developed from granitic rocks and they are classified as Haplic Cambisols (Dystric) under the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS) Working Group World Reference Base (WRB) [59]
The Soil organic carbon (SOC) content is significantly higher and the soil pH is significantly lower in forest and afforested soils than in the vineyard soils

Summary

Introduction

Soil has a crucial influence on matter and energy cycles, and knowledge of these cycles is most important in understanding the Earth’s surface geography. Visser et al [3] emphasized the importance of soil in sustainable development and in implementing strategies which achieve land degradation neutrality. Scientific work is influencing land managers, politicians, practitioners, end-users, and other scientific disciplines in acknowledging that soils are a key component of the Earth’s function and are crucial for human sustainability [4]. Current research shows that relevant soil processes are fundamentally influenced by land-use and land management because soils constitute the first earth system affected by humans in agriculture, grazing, mining, and infrastructure development [7,8,9]. Land-use is very dynamic due to continuous global activity and technological innovation, and resultant farming, grazing, transport, industry, tourism, mining, and other economic activities affect the Earth’s surface [10,11,12]

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