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The role of tillage in soil redistribution on hillslopes
Author(s) -
GOVERS G.,
VANDAELE K.,
DESMET P.,
POESEN J.,
BUNTE K.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
european journal of soil science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.244
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1365-2389
pISSN - 1351-0754
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2389.1994.tb00532.x
Subject(s) - tillage , plough , erosion , environmental science , soil science , arable land , hydrology (agriculture) , mulch till , soil retrogression and degradation , chisel , soil water , geology , no till farming , soil fertility , geotechnical engineering , geomorphology , agronomy , geography , agriculture , biology , archaeology
Summary Soil tillage is usually considered as a process having only an indirect influence on soil erosion. This paper describes the results of field experiments carried out with a mouldboard and a chisel plough showing that an important net downslope soil movement can be associated with soil tillage. Available experimental evidence suggests that the soil redistribution by tillage can be described by a diffusion‐type equation, which allows the intensity of the process to be characterized by a single number, which may be called the diffusion constant. The experimentally determined values of the diffusion constant vary between 100 and 400 kg m −1 a −1 . This implies that erosion and sedimentation rates associated with tillage may be more important than those associated with water erosion on much of the hilly arable land in western Europe. A comparison of recent hillslope evolution with model simulation results corroborates this conclusion. Therefore, tillage should be considered as a soil degradation process per se , rather than a process which makes the soil more sensitive to erosion.