Open AccessEvaluation of comprehensive improvement for mild and moderate soil salinization in arid zone
Author(s) -
Haichang Yang,
Yongqin David Chen,
Fenghua Zhang
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0224790
Subject(s) - soil salinity , salinity , environmental science , irrigation , arid , drainage , agronomy , soil water , crop yield , crop , soil salinity control , hydrology (agriculture) , leaching model , soil science , geology , biology , ecology , geotechnical engineering
Sustainable development of agricultural lands in arid environments is limited by soil salinization. Comprehensive measures were conducted to completely improve soil salinization in this study. For the purpose of assessing the effect of comprehensive improvement in salinized farmland in arid zone, soil salinity at a range of soil depths, EC of subsurface pipe drainage and crop yield during crop growth period in Xinjiang, China were investigated. The results show that soil salinity decreased significantly on mildly (1–3 dS m -1 ) and moderately (3–6 dS m -1 ) salinized farmlands. The improvement in moderately salinized soil was better than that in mildly salinized soil. The average desalinization rate of mildly and moderately salinized farmland was 15% and -15.8%, respectively. The more irrigation times were, the better desalinization effect became. The EC of drainage water varied in the range of 7.53–11.16 dS m -1 and was greater than the EC of irrigation water, which showed that subsurface pipe drainage can remove soil salinity from salinized farmlands. The crop yield using comprehensive improvement increased significantly compared with the control check. The outcome of this study suggests that comprehensive measures on salinized farmland are conductive to the decrease of soil salinity and the increase of crop yield.