Soil Structure Control in Corn and Soybean Residue Management System.

Abstract

Recent technology provides the ability to process cellulosic plant material for ethanol production. Removal of this material from agricultural fields may result in undesirable loss in soil quality, therefore in this study; various levels of residue removal from corn and soybean plots were tested to determine the proportion of residue to be left in the fields for sustainable soil quality maintenance. The experiment started in the year 2000 at ARS Brookings SD experimental site and in 2008; we measured unsaturated and saturated infiltration rates using tension infiltrometer and Cornell sprinkler infiltrometer respectively. Saturated conductivity of the soils was also measured using Amoozimeter. The pore size distribution were determined from our data and used as in index for characterizing structural control.