Soil Physical Quality Under Integrated Crop-Livestock-Forest in the Brazilian Cerrado.

            Soil physical quality is an important factor for sustainability of agricultural systems. Thus, the objective this research was to evaluate soil physical properties and soil organic carbon in a Typic Acrudox under integrated crop-livestock-forest system. The experiment was conduced in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. The treatments consisted of seven systems: (i) integrated crop-livestock-forest, with 357 trees ha^-1 and pasture height of 30 cm (CLF_357-30), (ii) integrated crop-livestock-forest with 357 trees ha^-1 and pasture height of 45 cm (CLF_357-45), (iii) integrated crop-livestock-forest with 227 trees ha^-1 and pasture height of 30 cm (CLF_227-30), (iv) integrated crop-livestock-forest with 227 trees ha^-1 and pasture height of 45 cm (CLF_227-45), (v) crop-livestock with pasture height of 30 cm (CL₃₀), (vi) crop-livestock with pasture height of 45 cm (CL₄₅) and (vii) native vegetation (NV). Soil properties were evaluated for 0 - 10 cm and 10 - 20 cm depths. All grazing treatments increased the bulk density (BD), penetration resistance (PR) and decreased total porosity (TP) and macroporosity (MA) compared with NV. The values of BD (1.18 Mg dm^-3 - 1.47 Mg dm^-3), MA (0.14 m³ m^-3 - 0.17 m³ m^-3) and PR (0.62 - 0.81 MPa) in 0 - 10 cm depths are not restrictive to plant growth. The change of land use from NV for CL or CLF decreased soil organic carbon (SOC) and soil organic carbon pool (SOC_pool). All pastured treatments had similar SOC_pool in 0 - 10 cm depth and were lower compared to that for NV (17.58 Mg ha^-1).