Effects of integrated land management, landscape position and land-use types on soil physicochemical properties, discharge, species richness and carbon stock in Geda watershed, north Shewa, Ethiopia

Effects of integrated land management, landscape position and land-use types on soil physicochemical properties, discharge, species richness and carbon stock in Geda watershed, north Shewa, Ethiopia PDF Author: Hailu Terefe
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3346346757
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2020 in the subject Environmental Sciences, grade: A, Addis Ababa University, course: Environmental Science, language: English, abstract: This research is aimed at exploring the changes in indicators of ecosystem services associated with integrated land management practices and generating information and data from agricultural landscapes. The specific objectives are to evaluate changes in selected soil physicochemical properties of the treated site taking the neighboring control site as a base, to quantify the change in water discharge due to integrated land management practices, to assess plant species richness in the watershed and compute changes due to integrated land management practices, to determine the plant biomass production and carbon stock of the watershed associated with integrated land management practices. This thesis is organized in five chapters. The first chapter provides general background information followed by the research problem, justification of the study, research objectives, hypotheses and research questions. The second chapter is a review of relevant literatures that gives existing evidences on the severity of land degradation, rehabilitation efforts and outcomes of rehabilitation works in Ethiopia, and the third chapter is the materials and methods section that begins with a description of the study area and explanations the research methods. Chapter four presents results and discussion of each research objective which are published in or submitted to peer-reviewed scientific journals and manuscripts under preparation. Chapter five provides the conclusions and recommendations of the research.

Effects of integrated land management, landscape position and land-use types on soil physicochemical properties, discharge, species richness and carbon stock in Geda watershed, north Shewa, Ethiopia

Effects of integrated land management, landscape position and land-use types on soil physicochemical properties, discharge, species richness and carbon stock in Geda watershed, north Shewa, Ethiopia PDF Author: Hailu Terefe
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3346346757
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2020 in the subject Environmental Sciences, grade: A, Addis Ababa University, course: Environmental Science, language: English, abstract: This research is aimed at exploring the changes in indicators of ecosystem services associated with integrated land management practices and generating information and data from agricultural landscapes. The specific objectives are to evaluate changes in selected soil physicochemical properties of the treated site taking the neighboring control site as a base, to quantify the change in water discharge due to integrated land management practices, to assess plant species richness in the watershed and compute changes due to integrated land management practices, to determine the plant biomass production and carbon stock of the watershed associated with integrated land management practices. This thesis is organized in five chapters. The first chapter provides general background information followed by the research problem, justification of the study, research objectives, hypotheses and research questions. The second chapter is a review of relevant literatures that gives existing evidences on the severity of land degradation, rehabilitation efforts and outcomes of rehabilitation works in Ethiopia, and the third chapter is the materials and methods section that begins with a description of the study area and explanations the research methods. Chapter four presents results and discussion of each research objective which are published in or submitted to peer-reviewed scientific journals and manuscripts under preparation. Chapter five provides the conclusions and recommendations of the research.

Impacts of Landscape Change on Water Resources

Impacts of Landscape Change on Water Resources PDF Author: Manoj K. Jha
Publisher: MDPI
ISBN: 3039434268
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Changes in land use and land cover can have many drivers, including population growth, urbanization, agriculture, demand for food, evolution of socio-economic structure, policy regulations, and climate variability. The impacts of these changes on water resources range from changes in water availability (due to changes in losses of water to evapotranspiration and recharge) to degradation of water quality (increased erosion, salinity, chemical loadings, and pathogens). The impacts are manifested through complex hydro-bio-geo-climate characteristics, which underscore the need for integrated scientific approaches to understand the impacts of landscape change on water resources. Several techniques, such as field studies, long-term monitoring, remote sensing technologies, and advanced modeling studies, have contributed to better understanding the modes and mechanisms by which landscape changes impact water resources. Such research studies can help unlock the complex interconnected influences of landscape on water resources in terms of quantity and quality at multiple spatial and temporal scales. In this Special Issue, we published a set of eight peer-reviewed articles elaborating on some of the specific topics of landscape changes and associated impacts on water resources.

Land Use Change and Slope Positions Affect Soil Organic Carbon

Land Use Change and Slope Positions Affect Soil Organic Carbon PDF Author: Wycliffe Tumwesigye
Publisher: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
ISBN: 9783659675454
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
Changing land use and slope positions have a considerable influence on soil organic carbon (SOC) and soil fertility. We investigated soil organic carbon stocks in annual crops, community tea and factory tea along three slope positions: up slope, middle slope and down slope. It was found that soil organic carbon stocks are higher in factory tea, followed by community tea and lastly annual crops. The differences in SOC stocks were attributed to different management practices across the land use types such as use of fertilizers. Converting land use from annual crops to tea plantations resulted into an increase in SOC stocks. There was high SOC stocks down slope followed by up slope and the least SOC stocks were found in middle slope. This was attributed to the effect of soil erosion especially, on middle slopes that draws soil down from the top to the bottom of the hills. It was concluded that Land use change and management practices both have an influence on SOC stocks and these affect the soil fertility and crop production in the long run

Combined Effects of Land Use Change and Climate Change on Soil Loss and Water Bablance Variables

Combined Effects of Land Use Change and Climate Change on Soil Loss and Water Bablance Variables PDF Author: Yashar Makhtoumi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Changes in water balance variables such as runoff and evapotranspiration (ET) are essential in planning and management of land and water resources. Two major factors affecting these variables are climate and land use change. There is a need to investigate the combined effects of land use and climate change at local scales. Towards that end, the hydrological processes were modeled using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to investigate the impacts of climate and land use change in Southeast US (Makhtoumi, Li, Ibeanusi, and Chen, 2020). We integrated land use based on the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) with future climate data (CMIP5) to study the combined effects on hydrological response of Upper Choctawhatchee Watershed (UCW.) Future rainfall and air temperature, for two time periods (2040-2069 and 2070-2099), were obtained using Global Climate Models to provide SWAT with the climatic forcing in order to project water balance variables. The simulation was carried out under two radiative forcing pathways of Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP6.0.) Our results indicate that increased imperviousness resulted from urbanization has more impact on runoff than that of projected changes in climate. Impacts on water balance variables (runoff, ET, discharge) differed seasonally. Results showed peak surface runoff experienced changes under both emission scenarios in June up to five times increase. Among the water balance variables, ET as the least dominant pathways for water loss, showed the modest changes with the largest decrease during fall and summer. Projections indicated more frequent extreme behavior regarding precipitation, peak surface runoff, water yield (WY) and ET, during midcentury. Discharge was estimated to increase through the year and the highest changes were expected during summer and fall with 186.3% increase in November under RCP6.0. Relying on rainfall for farming along with reduced agricultural land use (11.8%) and increased urban area (47%) and population growth, would likely make the water use efficiency critical. In our second study, we focused on the combined impact of land use and climate change on soil erosion at local scales. Topsoil loss is a widespread environmental concern causing adverse impacts on natural and human systems. Severe weather accompanied with human activities can exacerbate this issue degrading soil health and consequently accelerating global and regional food insecurity and injustice. Erosion impairs soil physical and chemical properties such as infiltration rate, water holding capacity, loss of nutrients including soil carbon and nitrogen. Although, temporal properties of a rainfall event have meaningful implications for soil erosion, spatial heterogeneity of a rainfall contributes substantially and cannot be overlooked. Therefore, in the third chapter we investigated soil loss using SWAT in Northern Mississippi. First, we built a hydrological model and calibrated it for both flow and sediment discharge. Then we developed land use and climate scenarios. The land use scenarios include farming (soybean and corn) and grazing practices. The climate scenarios comprise of four different precipitation time series, S0 which no concentration is forced, while S1, S2, and S3 have 3%, 6%, and 9% concentration in top four rainy days, respectively. We coupled the land use and climate scenarios and evaluated a small watershed (Hickahala Creek Watershed) in response. We classified the subbasins into different classes of soil loss severity and then determined the hotspots for soil loss at subbasin scale. Our result suggests that the resolution of rainfall data is crucial in studying the soil loss. We found that pasture management by itself can manifold soil loss, and if accompanied with extreme rainfalls, soil loss accelerates impacting different subbasins each time. We found that spatial heterogeneity of extreme rainfalls (ERs) can be more substantial than land use in individual extreme rainfalls; however, over a year, soil moisture and type of the management practices (grazing and farming) could contribute more to soil loss. Soil loss can go as high as 350 (ton/ha/yr) under the ERs. Adding only the management practices can increase erosion 3600%. Under S1 parts of watershed yield more than 150 ton/ha/yr (extremely severe). Under S2 and S3 more soil loss hotspots emerge yielding approximately 200 ton/ha/yr. We found that in the hotspots, up to 10% increase in CI can increase annual soil loss up to 75%. Single ER can generate up to 35% of annual soil loss. Under one ER event hotspot subbasins can lose up to 160 ton/ha/day (subbasin 15). The results reveal that adding grazing and farming (S0) under one ER event can increase soil loss by 95%. 32% and 80% increase in rainfall amount in one ER event can increase soil loss by 94% and 285% respectively. Our results suggested the importance of site-specific managements to mitigate soil loss and all the consequences. It is essential to consider the varying sensitivity of subbasins for the sustainability of agricultural landscapes.

Land Use and the Carbon Cycle

Land Use and the Carbon Cycle PDF Author: Daniel G. Brown
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139619497
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 591

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Book Description
As governments and institutions work to ameliorate the effects of anthropogenic CO2 emissions on global climate, there is an increasing need to understand how land-use and land-cover change is coupled to the carbon cycle, and how land management can be used to mitigate their effects. This book brings an interdisciplinary team of fifty-eight international researchers to share their novel approaches, concepts, theories and knowledge on land use and the carbon cycle. It discusses contemporary theories and approaches combined with state-of-the-art technologies. The central theme is that land use and land management are tightly integrated with the carbon cycle and it is necessary to study these processes as a single natural-human system to improve carbon accounting and mitigate climate change. The book is an invaluable resource for advanced students, researchers, land-use planners and policy makers in natural resources, geography, forestry, agricultural science, ecology, atmospheric science and environmental economics.

Climate Warming and Pastoral Land Use Change

Climate Warming and Pastoral Land Use Change PDF Author: Julia Anne Klein
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 718

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Book Description


Effect of Land Use Change and Slope Position on Soil Organic Carbon in Kitabi Watershed, Rwanda

Effect of Land Use Change and Slope Position on Soil Organic Carbon in Kitabi Watershed, Rwanda PDF Author: W. Tumwesigye
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 51

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Book Description


Assessing the Impact of Land Use and Management Practices on Soil Organic Carbon Loss in an Agricultural Watershed in the Mid-Atlantic Region

Assessing the Impact of Land Use and Management Practices on Soil Organic Carbon Loss in an Agricultural Watershed in the Mid-Atlantic Region PDF Author: Sadiya B. Tijjani
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Measuring organic carbon (OC) losses from soils presents a challenge because of the intricate interplay of human-induced and biophysical processes that govern its transfer from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems. This study employed a modeling approach to enhance our comprehension of human activities' influence on particulate OC (POC) and dissolved OC (DOC) losses from a typical agricultural watershed to the riverine ecosystem through surface and subsurface flows in the Upper Maurice Watershed in the Mid-Atlantic Region. We calibrated and validated an eco-hydrological model (i.e., SWAT-C) using historical (2001-2020) data on streamflow, sediment, POC, DOC loads, and crop yields. Simulation outcomes from 2001 to 2020 reveal that surface runoff was the primary contributor to the total DOC load (65%), followed by lateral flow (30%), and then groundwater (5%). Meanwhile, POC load was linked to erosion processes induced by surface runoff. Our findings indicate that agricultural land-use types exhibited the highest annual average DOC and POC loads. Forests and grasslands displayed intermediate loads, while barren land had the lowest load. Concerning seasonal fluctuations, agricultural land-use types exhibited distinct DOC and POC load patterns when compared to forest and grassland types indicating the dominant role of management practices in determining SOC losses. Notable seasonal variations were observed among the three primary crop rotations, namely corn-soybean (CS), corn-soybean-soybean (CSS), and corn-soybean-winter wheat (CSW), which can be attributed to management practices and residue quality (e.g., C: N ratio). We additionally examined management practices' impact on SOC budgets, considering various combinations of tillage, irrigation, and fertilization levels in the watershed by comparing two baselines: (1) pre-treatment and (2) post-treatment. The results showed maximal SOC sequestration with full irrigation, no-till (NT), and full fertilization in the three rotations compared with both baselines. In contrast, the largest SOC depletion arose from combining conservation tillage (CT) and no fertilization, irrespective of irrigation in both scenarios. Our study demonstrated SWAT-C's effectiveness in measuring lateral DOC and POC fluxes from agricultural watersheds to riverine ecosystems. The model can also simulate land use and management impacts on SOC changes and is a valuable decision-support tool for watershed carbon management plans.

Soil Carbon Dynamics and Gaseous Emissions in Riparian Zones in Coshocton, Ohio

Soil Carbon Dynamics and Gaseous Emissions in Riparian Zones in Coshocton, Ohio PDF Author: Joyce K. Tanzosh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Compost
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Abstract: Riparian zones are the land boundaries that connect aquatic and terrestrial realms, consisting of either natural or planted vegetation. The high productivity and the unique soil and moisture characteristics typical of riparian systems enables them to store relatively large amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC). However, riparian areas may be net emitters of other greenhouse gases (GHGs) because certain environmental conditions such as saturated soils may accentuate the emission of GHGs through methanogenesis and denitrification. Landuse influences the SOC pool and the release of GHGs though its effect on soil properties, temperature and moisture regimes. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of landuse on SOC pool and GHG emissions in riparian zones in two agricultural watersheds in Coshocton, Ohio. In watershed A, the SOC pool (0-100 cm depth) was 251.1 ± 78.1, 193.0 ± 47.2 and 97.9 ± 4.7 Mg ha−1 in riparian grass, riparian forest and cropland systems, respectively. Both riparian systems contained more SOC pool than the upland landuse. In watershed B, the SOC pool was 126.3 ± 3.3, 135.0 ± 29.3 and 95.7 ± 1.2 Mg ha−1 in riparian grass, riparian forest and upland pasture landuses, respectively. No differences were observed among landuses. Likewise, no differences existed between the SOC pool in the grass and forest riparian systems in either watershed sampled. Differences in fine root mass and soil properties were frequently observed among landuses, and were generally linearly related to the SOC pool. Soil properties consistently differed among landuses, yet, the SOC pool did not. These data suggest that site history, land management and ecosystem age were stronger determinants of SOC pool than soil properties. In watershed A, the carbon dioxide (CO2-C) flux (Mg C ha−1 y−1 ) was 24.5 + 2.7, 9.2 ± 1.4 and 19.0 ± 3.3 in the riparian grass, riparian forest and cropland landuses, respectively. In watershed B,CO2-C flux (Mg C ha−1 y−1) was 15.7± 1.8, 9.8 ± 1.1 and 13.9 ± 2.2 in the riparian grass, riparian forest and upland pasture landuses, respectively. The CO2-C flux was positively correlated with both air and soil temperatures across all landuses. In watershed A, methane (CH4-C) flux (kg C ha−1 y−1 )s 44.1 ± 5.8, 32.1 ± 7.7 and 40.9 ± 6.8 in the riparian grass, riparian forest and cropland landuses, respectively. In watershed B, CH4-C flux (kg ha−1 y−1) was 63.3 ± 5.5, 29.4 ± 4.2 and 60.3 ± 5.9 in the riparian grass, riparian forest and pasture landuses, respectively. The CH4-C flux was positively correlated with both air and soil tperatures across landuses. In watershed A, nitrous oxide (N2O-N) flux (kg ha−1 y−1) was 27.4 ± 5.3, 16.0 ± 1.5 and 37.4 ± 8.9 in the riparian grass, riparian forest and cropland landuses, respectively. In watershed B, N2O-N flux (kg N ha−1 y−1 ) was 20.7 ± 4.3, 12.6 ± 1.2 and 15.9 ± 4.8 in the riparian grass, riparian forest and pasture landuses, respectively. The N2O-N flux was positively correlated with precipitation and soil moisture content for several landuses. Land management activities (i.e., tillage, herbicide application, grazing) also influenced GHG emission. Overall, the riparian forests in this study emitted less GHGs and had less global warming potential (GWP) compared to the riparian grasses.

Land Use Change Effects on Soil Degradation, Carbon and Nutrient Stocks and Greenhouse Gas Emission in Mountain Watersheds

Land Use Change Effects on Soil Degradation, Carbon and Nutrient Stocks and Greenhouse Gas Emission in Mountain Watersheds PDF Author: Keshab D. Awasthi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788257506216
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description