Abstract
Establishing field water balances is difficult and costly, the variability of their components being the major problem to obtain reliable results. This component variability is presented herein for a coffee crop grown in the Southern Hemisphere, on a tropical soil with 10% slope. It was observed that: rainfall has to be measured with an appropriate number of replicates; irrigation can introduce great variability into calculations; evapotranspiration, calculated as a remainder of the water balance equation, has exceedingly high coefficients of variation; the soil water storage component is the major contributor in error propagation calculations to estimate evapotranspiration; and that runoff can be satisfactorily controlled on the 10% slope through crop management practices.
Highlights
Water balances are important to follow water dynamics in agricultural and natural ecosystems
It was observed that: rainfall has to be measured with an appropriate number of replicates; irrigation can introduce great variability into calculations; evapotranspiration, calculated as a remainder of the water balance equation, has exceedingly high coefficients of variation; the soil water storage component is the major contributor in error propagation calculations to estimate evapotranspiration; and that runoff can be satisfactorily controlled on the 10% slope through crop management practices
Reichardt et al (1995) discussed the problem of rainfall variability using the city of Piracicaba as an example, and demonstrated that spatial variability has to be taken into consideration and rainfall has to be measured as close as possible to the experimental area, as it was made in this study, especially for short time periods (e.g. 14 days)
Summary
Water balances are important to follow water dynamics in agricultural and natural ecosystems. They indicate, in space and time, conditions under which plants grow and develop, and are useful in the interpretation of plant behavior during periods that differ from the ordinary local climatic conditions, such as periods of water excess or deficit. These aspects are important for crop management and the understanding of the behavior of natural ecosystems. The establishment of water balances is an excellent tool to better understand these water relations with respect to the growth and development of the crop, and to quantify important nitrogen losses by leaching, volatilization and runoff
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